A slim novel, all of 144 pages, set in the 1950s, that dives into the marriage of Kathleen and Virgil. A more innocent time one may wrongly think abouA slim novel, all of 144 pages, set in the 1950s, that dives into the marriage of Kathleen and Virgil. A more innocent time one may wrongly think about the 1950s, at least it is not innocent for this married couple with two sons, whose lives, especially during the course of their marriage thus far, are filled with un-marital behavior and secrets. Kathleen, who'd thought she might have what it takes to become a professional tennis player, opted for the safer course of marriage and children, isn't constrained so much by her husband - nor is he constrained by her - but by the choices she herself made, that she didn't have to make. The set-up is clever, on a fall day that seems warm as summer, Kathleen, fearing what awaits her in the future, opts out of Sunday church - the family-churchgoing a new activity that Virgil has instituted for his own reasons - and gets into the pool in the apartment complex where the family has been living, ostensibly temporarily, and stays there for the next several hours. She. her past and parents and aspirations and loves, are not the only focus, Virgil gets equal, if not more, time, his life and father and workdays, are under examination, and hours later the question left open-ended is whether they will or won't move forward together. I enjoyed the throwback, the details, the revelation of secrets, and found it interesting that no present-day sensibility really intruded on the unfolding story. That being said, I also lost some interest along the way and I'm not sure why.
Thanks to Little, Brown and Company and Netgalley for the arc....more
Ghosts fill this speculative auto-fiction-ish novel. It's set in that strange state that is Florida, with its bizarre politicians, its right-wingers, Ghosts fill this speculative auto-fiction-ish novel. It's set in that strange state that is Florida, with its bizarre politicians, its right-wingers, its swamps and humidity and insects and snakes and cats and more, set after the pandemic, or a pandemic, where those stricken, like the unnamed first-person narrator and her sister, experienced serious fevers and strange reactions afterwards. The narrator, in her late 30s, a ghost writer for a famous and rich mystery writer, and the narrator's husband, a long-distance runner and historian writing about medieval pilgrimages, came to Florida from upstate New York where he was teaching, to care for her dying father, and stayed on, in her mother's house when the pandemic struck. They are still there. The ghosts are plentiful - all the narrator's prior selves, including the one that was committed to an institution, the ghost pal of her young niece, the pictures of those who apparently have gone missing, perhaps because of the mysterious AI device called Mind's Eye that takes you where you need to go. If that weren't enough, there's snakes galore, grasshoppers in force, a major weather event of ceaseless rain and flooding, an accidental cult created by the narrator's mother. For most of the novel, I was right there, intrigued by the narrator's voice that is cool and a bit disassociated, her observations keen about the state of the world, about the state of the novel, about the state of one's story, but when another plot point was introduced, having to do with twin sisters, and the identity of the famous mystery writer for whom the narrator is one of many ghosts, and the existence of the different realities afforded by Mind's Eye, I got tired of it and less interested as the narrator became her own secondary character in the story of her life. Still, an engaging read, often unnerving, and also sometimes funny. Really, who today hasn't been warped by, isn't now living a warped reality, caused by our own lives and collective lives, pandemic and politics and weather and technology and our minds in what is our new normal, and how do we forge on trying to create our connection to the new realities?
Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Netgalley for the arc....more
I found this historical fiction - fictionalized? - novel mesmerizing. Being inside the minds of two different and aging, aged artists, Eileen Gray andI found this historical fiction - fictionalized? - novel mesmerizing. Being inside the minds of two different and aging, aged artists, Eileen Gray and Le Corbusier, here named Le Grand, as they individually trek back to the South of France location where both took ownership, real and stolen, of a villa designed and built by Eileen pre-World War II. It's atmospheric and compelling, poetic, lyrical and disturbing, about art and artists, about men and their power, their presumptions and assumptions, about gender, love, relationships, genius and jealousy, about the hunger to create that is never assuaged. There is philosophy and art and thousand-year-old caves and paintings and decades-old love affairs and disturbing behavior and I will remember these artists, as rendered by Alison, for a long time. I did wonder why Eileen is identified by her real name and Le Corbusier is given a pseudonym, and I'd love to know the reason why. I do not think one has to have any advance knowledge of who either was to fall into this book. It presupposes an intelligence on the part of the reader, which I loved, to follow along (and it's easy) as we switch between one artist and the other, as we moved from one artistic mind to the other, one female, one male, and of their time and place, although Eileen is more of her time, of the way women's achievements were treated than is Le Grand. There is an interesting repetition that is carried through the book - of the colors of the ocean, sky, the plants, and more, which served, for me at least, to intensify the strange and winding bond between Eileen and Le Grand, even all these years later after what he'd done to her first venture into architecture, the villa she designed and named Time.
Thanks to W.W. Norton & Company and Netgalley for the arc....more
"...she knows the essence of the poems she would write: small, opaque, complex. About nothing in particular: Producing not so much a meaning as an eff"...she knows the essence of the poems she would write: small, opaque, complex. About nothing in particular: Producing not so much a meaning as an effect." And indeed, this debut novel is small, sort of opaque, aiming for complexity, about nothing in particular - a single day in the life of Oxford student Annabel, who unfortunately goes by the nickname Annie - though it is rarely used - about nothing in particular - except for the way that Annabel assesses everything in her tiny world, comprised, for a good portion of this slim novel, in her room at college at Oxford, in the winter, with an essay about Shakespeare's Sonnets soon due. We are nearly entirely in Annabel's mind and body - as she wakes, prepares for her early morning work, reading various of the sonnets, contemplating all that that means, jotting down words as she searches for what her essay topic might be, aware of her thoughts, and of her body, needing to pee, arousal, and more, and the way she turns nature to her own purposes. A scholarly setting and work, it was quite fascinating to be with Annabel's thoughts as she contemplates the deep meanings of the sonnets she reads, considers Shakespeare not as long dead, but alive and hungry and lustful and perhaps bisexual. The compelling minutia of a hardworking university student who has far more access to her thoughts than perhaps most at that age - what comes across later is that perhaps she's not a natural student, that she is training herself for this life of the mind, that she is, if not secretive, than close to it, keeping her phone off while she works (everyone should really do this!), interacting nearly not at all with those in her hall, texting only when she must, avoiding the question her older boyfriend has asked her - whether he should come to Oxford for the upcoming weekend, rent a hotel room. She has either learned or naturally wants to keep her worlds, and her thoughts, compartmentalized, wanting the life of the mind even as her body wants more. It is something more than mere self-consciousness at work here. She eats healthfully, but perhaps wishes she could lose a few pounds, does yoga, does not drink much, or socialize much, seems to doubt the intentions of others - perhaps Ciara, a fellow student also writing the essay on the sonnets, would actually like to be friends with her. What is compelling about the book is its quotidian focus, bringing to life the muchness of it when we actually pay attention to ourselves and our minutes and hours, our ways of doing things. Whether her imaginary characters - perhaps two sides of herself - that she labels the Seducer and the Scholar - two homoerotic men whose lives she imagines on her long afternoon walk, or in her room - either work or are needed, I'm not sure - I found they took me out of the story, even as their story, that she has fabulated, was fairly interesting - their purpose, though, in such a short novel, I haven't figured out. Perhaps the study of the Sonnets leads to her many sexual fantasies, perhaps Annabel, who seems rather lifeless, even as she heeds every aspect of herself, has always had such sexual fantasies - and for a young woman who seems to want to live a life of her own devising, it is interesting that the fantasies were submissive-dominant ones, she as the submissive. It's a lonely place that Annabel lives, even as it gives her pleasure, and I both enjoyed being there with her, as well as knowing that being there with her would only last 208 pages. What I especially liked about the book is this - while it's more traditional than perhaps the subject matter might lead one to believe - it didn't have stunts, and the author stayed true to her belief that a reader would find Annabel interesting enough, or her actions and thoughts interesting enough, that the reader would be willing to remain there with her. I look forward to what Brown writes next.
Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Netgalley for the arc....more
I just could not enter into the mind and the near-stream of consciousness of this first-person narrator, no matter how hard I tried. This youngish PalI just could not enter into the mind and the near-stream of consciousness of this first-person narrator, no matter how hard I tried. This youngish Palestinian woman, living in NY, and somehow, despite a lack of degree, teaching at a school for underprivileged boys, a task she might take to heart but very much follows her own internal curriculum, all the while meandering through the city, focusing on her designer wardrobe, cleaning herself meticulously, having sex with a man she knows well, a plotless story though interesting observations are made in the book. But why I was reading her story, why her story matters, I still have no clue; her descent, or rather, her further descent into a mental and physical spiraling is unique to her, without much universality. What I did like was a character who very much goes her own way, but being in her head never provided me more than varying degrees of discomfort. The focus on cleanliness, on her ablutions that are extremely detailed, on her sexual activities, seemed like elements designed perhaps to shock the reader, and left this reader wondering if to shock was the only point, and to shock, without more, isn't sufficient.
Thanks to Catapult and Netgalley for the arc....more
I expected to be as compelled by this as I had been by Disappearing Earth, alas I wasn’t. In some ways, a retelling of Rose Red and Snow White, two siI expected to be as compelled by this as I had been by Disappearing Earth, alas I wasn’t. In some ways, a retelling of Rose Red and Snow White, two sisters navigate the low end of the financial spectrum on one of the beautiful islands off Seattle, while dealing with the impending death of their mother and more. Atmospheric, certainly, and the characters, especially the younger sister, Sam, is thorny, the mystery and horrible fairy tale aspect of the bear, but there were things I found impossible to buy into - that in a tiny house where mother and daughters live, the sisters, who are presented to us, through Sam’s POV as incredibly close, would not actually talk about things, the foundation upon which Sam has based her life these last several years, about the future she and Elena, will end up having. I also found it quite repetitive, the same things being presented but mostly in the same way. Lots of surprising reveals that come late, and though the backstory is well twined into the forward story, it still felt like a lot of backstory for quite a long time. I’m sad this was my reaction, and many will love it, but it just never fully engaged or compelled me.
Thanks to Hogarth and Netgalley for the arc....more
I greatly enjoyed this debut novel. Set in the 1990s, in a tiny Irish town, population about 1000, whether Ireland will legalize divorce is the backdrI greatly enjoyed this debut novel. Set in the 1990s, in a tiny Irish town, population about 1000, whether Ireland will legalize divorce is the backdrop, women’s rights, the strictures and mores under which they live. The novel follows the lives of a few married women, reaching their middle years, mothers all, their marriages uniformly not as they want or perhaps expected. Among them is Colette, a poet, who left her husband, the wealthiest man in town, for a man she was sure she loved. Her husband has refused to let her see her sons, and when she leaves the affair, and returns from Dublin to the tiny town, her very existence will alter the lives of these other women, in big and small ways. The book, with its focus on a handful of lives, the small details, the ways one turn or another can change everything, reminded me of Anne Enright’s novels. I look forward to what the author writes next.
Thanks to Harper Via and Netgalley for the arc....more
A romp, clever, fun, funny, thoughtful, and nuanced, sci-if of a sort, time traveling, with a time-toggling plot, a spy story, a thriller, a romance, A romp, clever, fun, funny, thoughtful, and nuanced, sci-if of a sort, time traveling, with a time-toggling plot, a spy story, a thriller, a romance, plus arctic exploration, the past and the present and the future, and what is history actually? Though I felt it rushed at the end, lots of threads and elements gathered too fast together, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, for the story, the writing, the nuances of how the present might be seen from those in the past and vice versa, politics and identity dealt with a light yet incisive hand.
Thanks to Avid Reader Press and Netgalley for the arc....more
Spiraling backwards in time, from 2040 to 2014, this is a family’s narrative, in a sense a novel told in stories, with the narrators being the membersSpiraling backwards in time, from 2040 to 2014, this is a family’s narrative, in a sense a novel told in stories, with the narrators being the members of one cosmopolitan wealthy family, father, mother, three daughters, as well as those in their orbit, a chauffeur, a nanny, and others, the small and big moments that shape who each are, who they become, but at the center is the fragmented family, their individual stories told in a kaleidoscope fashion. Is the backward spiral necessary, I don’t know, because where we open is not with some shocking event, and for me, the novel has other issues as well: the threads of these family members never quite cohere, and the tonality of the novel changes through its course, but still I was intrigued in who they are, and interested to see who they were.
Thanks to Spiegel & Grau and Netgalley for the arc....more
A taut and chilling novel that takes as its basis a country invaded, a family’s act of kindness that is fraught and increasingly complicated. We aren’A taut and chilling novel that takes as its basis a country invaded, a family’s act of kindness that is fraught and increasingly complicated. We aren’t told what country this is, or the time period, though there are no cell phones mentioned. But the focus of the invaders becomes a minority ethnic group, the forced disclosure of their assets, the taking of those assets by the state, the forced relocation of that group into a walled part of the old city, the strictures, regulations, their identity cards, hangings of those found to be helping that besieged ethnic minority. It is the start of the Holocaust perhaps, or perhaps it is another Holocaust- which is already happening in less regulated ways in parts of the world, and which seems more and more likely today in others. A family takes in one of their younger daughter’s school friends when her parents are cut off in the part of the country where the invaders now rule. The school friend is from that ethnic minority, from a wealthy family recently moved to the old capitol, but she is no Anne Frank, instead wily and cunning despite her young years, manipulative, selfish, a liar about the glittering life she and her family led before the invasion - she doesn’t grasp what is actually happening. The father, a lowly accountant working for the state, imagines the gratitude of the girl’s parents when they realize what he has done for her- imagines the girl’s father will give him a much better job, will reimburse him for all he is spending to keep the girl safe. Inner dissension roils the family, the older daughter having to give up her room, the demands of the girl that the father tries to accommodate, and when identity cards are required, the noose tightens - his own family is at severe risk, as colleagues of his from that ethnic group begin to disappear. Told in a calm, dispassionate manner, one feels the fear, as well as the very delayed understanding of what is happening, of how easily people succumb, follow the rules, how doing good when confronting evil is not at all easy. Compelling and haunting.
Thanks to Guernica World Editions and Netgalley for the arc....more
Deceptive in its simplicity, this fourth book in Strout’s Amgash series is lovely, with its focus on Lucy Barton and Bob Burgess, but also their partnDeceptive in its simplicity, this fourth book in Strout’s Amgash series is lovely, with its focus on Lucy Barton and Bob Burgess, but also their partners, children, siblings, the people in their world in the small town in Maine where Lucy has settled with her ex-husband William, and Bob has spent his whole life, long married to minister Margaret. Olive Kitteridge is here as well, a friendship of sorts between she and Lucy predicated on telling each other stories about life and love and great loss and terrible harm, stories of those lives that go unrecorded. Perhaps Lucy is a stand-in for Strout, and although I’ve never quite believed that Lucy is a writer, I so enjoy being with these characters, how they see the world and themselves. It’s a thoughtful place, a gentle place, one of friendship and good deeds, even as it’s roiled by what is broken in others and themselves, their individual desires and hurts, and by the world. Reading this was a kind of tonic for the soul.
Thanks to Random House and Netgalley for the arc....more
I’m not the right reader for this quasi romance, rom-commish, family dysfunction novel about the three Peacock sisters and their toxic mother. Having I’m not the right reader for this quasi romance, rom-commish, family dysfunction novel about the three Peacock sisters and their toxic mother. Having just read another family dysfunction novel, featuring two sisters and a toxic mother, it struck me that bad mothers abound and the bond of sisterhood, even when stretched out with dysfunction, will somehow save us. This one moves at a clip, stuffed descriptions of a British castle, along with the menus of the youngest Peacock’s wedding weekend, handsome prince with money that is dirty, though he had nothing to do with why it is dirty, and a pet peeve of mine, name-checking other novels in its pages, name checked by the youngest Peacock sister, the young widow Sylvie, who is about to be married but still pining her dead husband, and is a librarian. And this is the second novel I’ve read in short order where a main character is a librarian. Though not for me, others will likely find it a fun read.
Thanks to Random House Publishing - Ballantine and Netgalley for the arc....more
Familial dysfunction writ large, a sad tale of stifled lives, opportunities grabbed that foreclose other ones, or that are lost, misshapen love, marriFamilial dysfunction writ large, a sad tale of stifled lives, opportunities grabbed that foreclose other ones, or that are lost, misshapen love, marriages that go awry, and heartbreak. There is a slight comedic tone, or that’s how I read it, which keeps the novel from being too weighted down by all the miseries. The Cohen women are the main draw - matriarch Frieda whose saving grace is the love she had for her husband, Rudy, a gentle Holocaust survivor, whose kindness and calm belied his experiences and the truths about himself. Their daughters: Shelly, with her brains, Nancy with her looks. The death of Rudy spins them away from one another, and yet. Covering decades and moving among the characters, their complicated relationships with one another continue to affect them, no matter the lives they make or mess up.
Unfortunately, for me, this didn’t strike a chord, nor did I fall into the world of Gainsborough and his family, especially his daughters. In part, thUnfortunately, for me, this didn’t strike a chord, nor did I fall into the world of Gainsborough and his family, especially his daughters. In part, that may have been because the version provided to me had no real spacing which made it arduous to read. Not the author’s fault, of course, and indeed it harms the author for readers to have to wade through pages of unindented and unspaced text, which keeps a reader from losing themselves in the story and the writing, and at this point in our techno times, providing novels in advance form should not be hindered by this. But in addition, I found the writing too flowery, it lacked that verisimilitude that brings historical fiction alive.
Thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the arc....more
A lovely and dreamy novel that seems as if the core relationship is between the unnamed narrator and the older man she meets while on a beach holiday A lovely and dreamy novel that seems as if the core relationship is between the unnamed narrator and the older man she meets while on a beach holiday in a small town in Australia. She is 24; the man she first meets in the ocean is 42 and named Jude. Meta in the sense that she is a would-be writer, reading the typical books for a girl that age seeking love, trying her hand at stories, and he, an isolated man, a former actor, an antique dealer of sorts, is drawn to her. It’s a quiet novel, un-melodramatic, and while the love affair consumes her, the real focus of the novel is the relationships among her and her family. Her mother had her when she was the same as the narrator, the father long gone from the picture. Mother and daughter as a pair, the intimacy between them, and with her much younger half brother, the ways that time shifts love and the varieties of love.
Thanks to Tin House Books and Netgalley for the ARC....more
I tend to avoid dystopian novels, I find a sameness to them all, and anyway we’re living in that dystopian future so why spend my time reading about iI tend to avoid dystopian novels, I find a sameness to them all, and anyway we’re living in that dystopian future so why spend my time reading about it. This one, though, is different. Dystopian, yes, with migrants and immigrants and wars that have torn people apart, water-logged, and more, but hope runs through it, as does folklore, magical realism, and an engaging narrator, 11 or 12 when the narrator, Silvia, comes to the building called The Morningside, on a city island that might be Manhattan, with her mother, the two of them having survived war in their own country. Captivating.
Thanks to Random House and Netgalley for the ARC....more
Fascinating, compelling, elliptical, elusive, interrogating art, relationships, motherhood, the lasting effects of twisted mothering, love and violencFascinating, compelling, elliptical, elusive, interrogating art, relationships, motherhood, the lasting effects of twisted mothering, love and violence, inequality, the dominance of men in relationships, gender, identity, bodies, racism, stereotypes, life and death. Both wild and tamped down, via the cool intellectual prose, the switching between characters, and between omniscient narrators and various first persons, the several different artists (a white male painter, a Black male painter, a female painter/multimedia artist, and a filmmaker) each only referred to as G, the interpretation of their singular works, the interpolation of other stories - a couple who have left their country and are trying to find a place to live, the story of a twisted mother and the terrible legacy of distance that inhabits her grown children, the death of a man in a museum, the punching of a woman by another woman in the street - I can't say I fully understand everything set out in this book, and likely it is a novel that needs to be read more than once to grasp what might have eluded the reader the first time around, but all of it stays in the mind. A brainy book that straddles fiction and dissertation but never leaves people behind.
Thanks to Farrar, Straus & Giroux and Netgalley for the ARC....more
Schneck is a known, award-winning writer in France, and these are the first works of hers to be translated into English. A triptych of novellas translSchneck is a known, award-winning writer in France, and these are the first works of hers to be translated into English. A triptych of novellas translated from the French, compelling and detailed, tracing the development of the life of Colombe, so I assume these works, like those of Annie Ernaux, are autobiography, memoir, rather than fiction, and cut close to the bone, with similar themes - time, place, strictures, rules, coming of age, love, an accidental pregnancy, schooling, marriage, affairs, divorce, midlife, and more - but Colombe, seemingly an only child, is born after the May 1968 student uprising, with its increased freedoms and changing sexual mores, at least in Paris. Her parents are Jewish left-wing doctors, first or second generation immigrants from Eastern Russia, part of the nouveau riche, though not as wealthy as Colombe's best friend from childhood, Heloise, and others at her exclusive private school long the bastion of important families with long lineages and old French money; still her family is part of the bourgeoise, with its rules for dressing and education and behavior, the rules ceding in more permissive Paris. Their life is easy, a lovely apartment in a lovely neighborhood, vacations, after school classes, ambitions, desires, the world will open for her, but all is not perfect - her mother Helene suffers intensely from her years during WW II, hiding alone in a church, able to love but not able to show love. Her father, a psychologist, very much enjoys the new freedom, is charming, has affairs, but always returns home. The first novella, Seventeen, is set in 1984, and Colombe's first love affair with a boy named Vincent unfolds with full knowledge of both sets of parents, sleepovers not hidden, and she is accidentally pregnant at 17. Though abortions are no longer illegal as they were in Ernaux's time, the Veil law has been passed, but legality does not alter the effects of abortion, its emotional ramifications on Colombe through the years are no less intense for the legality. The second novella, Friendship, focuses on the coming of age of Colombe and her best friend Heloise - they live rarified lives, English-language classes to perfect their British accents, tennis lessons, her vacations with Heloise's family in beautiful South of France homes, never shopping malls or borrowing books from the library, but there are differences between the two families and their place in Parisian life, relayed in subtle details relating to ethnicity, class, and politics during those formative years of the '70s and '80s. The third novella, Swimming: A Love Story, is set in 2020, and looking back at that time, Colombe recounts her great post-divorce love affair with Gabriel, when she is a mother and and a working woman, after a season of romantic disenchantment. They have nothing in common, but he is madly in love with her, and she, though fearful of trusting that love, does indeed give in to it, comes to believe it, but it is only later that she is able to look at the affair carefully, to see her emotional discomfort, to face the truth of her doubts, a love affair that unfolds and ends while Heloise is dying early; it's a beautiful meditation on the vagaries of being alive, about continuing on, though specific to time and place, these novellas also have great universality, and I found them fascinating, filled with grace, and frankness. What I also found interesting are the freedoms Schneck took telling her stories: though she has siblings, they are barely touched upon, and seem to have no relationship after their parents' die; her marriage is barely touched upon, the husband has no name, his profession isn't identified; her children are barely touched upon, names and ages unmentioned, no idea if sons or daughters. It strikes me that American readers get upset when women write about their lives without focusing on marriage, motherhood, etc. and I found that what is missing gave the author great agency, because the focus is on her, and she keeps the focus on herself, her development, what she learns, is given, takes, finds, rather those other, often mundane, often less interesting, parts of life. It is the story of a woman not the story of a wife and mother.
Thanks to The Penguin Group/The Penguin Press and Netgalley for the ARC....more
I remember reading Cutting for Stone when it first came out and being thoroughly compelled by that book, not so this one, though apparently I'm an outI remember reading Cutting for Stone when it first came out and being thoroughly compelled by that book, not so this one, though apparently I'm an outlier. A multiple-stranded, multiple-charactered story, that brings in everything including the kitchen sink - child-bride marriage, a strange condition that affects boys more than girls in a large and extended Indian family, the loss of babies and children, leprosy, medicine, art, mothers dead too young, politics, partition, religion, caste, and much much more. Sections of the book intrigued me, some of it I found myself skimming because of the too-muchness of it all, the neat tying up of loose ends, too neat for my taste. It's a magnus opus, a doorstopper at 724 pages, the writing not particularly wondrous, still after wading my way through this, and some of it read quickly, and some of it felt like a slog, I'm glad to have read it, and though I have no issue with long books, I love long books, either I wasn't properly settled in for this one, or, in my opinion, it could have been trimmed substantially so that not everything carried the same weight.
Thanks to Grove Press and Netgalley for the ARC....more
