Sometimes all it takes is a name and the die is cast. For Harriet Burden, the fact that her father called her Harry from a young age felt like a challenge; one that she grabs onto with all the tenacity of a pit bull, even when it causes her nothing but pain. Harriet is the protagonist in Siri Hustvedt’s new novel, The Blazing World, a tour-de-force of one woman’s determination ... Read More...
We Are Water: A Novel
How a work can be solid and delicate, earthy and of air is a mystery but describes Wally Lamb’s novel, We Are Water. Ostensibly it is the story of Annie Oh—wife, mother, artist and keeper of secrets, secrets that grow and beget other secrets, changing her life and the lives around her. When she is only five, she watches as her mother is swept away by a flood, along with her ... Read More...
What I Need When I Read
When I read Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs I loved it. The protagonist was a middle-age, single woman who was angry about a lot of life. For some this anger was off-putting and there were reviewers who found the woman (Nora) disagreeable and depressing. I certainly felt sympathy for her situation but by and large, even when she made me uncomfortable, Nora was a character I ... Read More...
Happy Any Day Now
Happy Any Day Now begins with the approach of Judith Soo Jin Raphael’s fiftieth birthday and in addition to the normal aging nerves, she is dealing with the return of her college love (who dumped her because his blue-blood mother didn’t think she was good enough for their family), the return of her father (who left her and her mother when she was still a little girl), and ... Read More...
Note to Self
While it seems to be a contradiction in terms to describe a novel as both sharp and sluggish, it applies (in the best way) to Alina Simone’s debut, Note to Self. She melds the jagged edge anxiety of an unemployed woman in NYC with the ennui that means getting out of bed is a Herculean task. She woke up in the mornings already exhausted by the possibilities. The woman is ... Read More...
The Woman Upstairs
We’re the quiet woman at the end of the third-floor hallway, whose trash is always tidy, who smiles brightly in the stairwell with a cheerful greeting, and who, from behind closed doors, never makes a sound. In our lives of quiet desperation, the woman upstairs is who we are, with or without a goddamn tabby or pesky lolloping Labrador, and not a soul registers that we are ... Read More...
