Algonquin Books

Paris Was Ours

mandy — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 20:00:00 +0000

“Paris lives in its details,” observes one contributor to this collection of essays. But equally true is the idea of Paris that thrives through clichés. You’ll find spare references to the Eiffel Tower, berets, cheese, and wine in Paris Was Ours, although the apparently ineluctable forms of French snobbery are discussed. What this anthology delivers instead are a wide breadth of creative and nuanced meditations on the culture, history, and inhabitants of the City of Light, confirming that all our romantic associations with Paris, despite the city’s faults, are quite justified.

Paris Was Ours offers a diversity of voices and topics, and in this regard, it is a superior resource among the proliferating anthologies on the city. (Adam Gopnik’s Paris to the Moon and Sarah Turnbull’s Almost French come to mind.) The contributors range from well-known writer David Sedaris and poet C.K. Williams, to a homeless woman, a chef, an Iranian revolution escapee, and various scholars. There are translations in the book from Arabic, Spanish, and French.

Paris Was Ours serves as a useful introduction to French culture, and even the most frequent travelers to France will find it illuminates what can oftentimes be perplexing Parisian mores, such as their disdain for discussing money matters, heavy-handed parenting style, chic fashion sense, tangled bureaucratic systems, insistence on a well-rounded and balanced quality of life, and greater acceptance of human shortcomings in their political leaders. Reading the book had the satisfying effect of gaining a greater appreciation for living in France, and perhaps by some comparison, the United States.

One discovery I made is that, for many of the writers, living in Paris afforded a certain liberation that led to greater self-knowledge and appreciation. “People just find themselves here,” says one Uighur journalist. Valerie Steiker, in “Fledgling Days,” whose sojourn was motivated by her desire to connect with her deceased mother by re-living similar Parisian experiences, learns about humility and self-reliance. In “Understanding Chic,” Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni discovers that “[t]he secret to acquiring chic… is to correct negative thinking.” In “Just Another American,” African American student Janet McDonald describes how Paris freed her from being perceived mainly through the confines of racial assumptions:

The French drew no such [racial] distinctions, which meant I no longer had to worry about making African Americans look good. Or bad. Whatever I did was attributed to Americanness, not blackness. What a switch – a black person with the power to make white people look bad.

No discussion of Paris is complete without mention of seduction and romance, and there is certainly plenty of that in this collection. One standout essay is “Love Without Reason,” where student of post-structural theory Caroline Weber draws comparisons between Lacan’s views on human desire and her foray into becoming “a one-woman band of seduction.” In “Ma Vie Bohème,” Karen Shur sensually describes the days and nights spent with her lover in their scant apartment. Brigid Dorsey, in “Litost,” tells the heartbreaking story of her failed romantic relationship with the father of her child.

Paris Was Ours will conjure nostalgic feelings for those who have lived in Paris, and wanderlust for those who have yet to visit. Many aspects of Parisian life are captured in such original and surprising ways that I found the book tough to put down and almost as good as walking down the Champs-Élysées.

Written by: Abigail Licad, April 16th 2011

Pictures of You

mandy — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Caroline Leavitt

Algonquin Books

Reading Pictures of You is like having encounters with people you randomly meet on the street, at the beach, on in a park. Novelist Caroline Leavitt’s compelling characters have lived through unpredictable tragedies—some of them more than one—and knowing their stories compells the reader to consider why these people are who they are, and how they have managed to survive their respective hardships.

Pictures of You begins with a dark and unimaginable situation, which sets the scene for the remainder of the read. An accident brings the main characters together, and then proceeds to tear them apart. As they struggle to recover and re-adapt to their lives, each person’s experiences feel palpable and close to home. As their stories, their stories become intertwined, brilliantly intermeshed in survival. The characters are faced with uneasy decisions about love, death, fear of loss, and the pursuit of happiness. They find answers to difficult questions: when do you follow your heart and do you ever cease to question the certainty of your decisions?

In building the characters’ backstories, Leavitt proves she is able to sustain the pace and move through the difficult experiences. She uses peripheral characters to help define the basic structure of the story and set it up for its end. The realness the author brings to the characters moves them forward to face their pain with hope for the future. She deftly nails every character using direct language to provide inner dialogue. While reading, I felt pangs of pain through their grievous times and rejoiced in their accomplishments.

At times reading as a mystery, Pictures of You gives us encouragement to enjoy the lives we live—or make the necessary changes now.

Written by: Carolyn Espe, April 1st 2011

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

barbara — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Heidi W. Durrow

Algonquin Books

Heidi W. Durrow’s novel swirls out from and obsessively around the moment when a mother and her three children fall from the rooftop of a Chicago building. The narration crystalizes around this striking event, with multiple narrators adding their points of view to the interpretation of the mystery surrounding the plunge. Rachel, the sole survivor, struggles to adjust to the losses and changed that characterize her life after the fall. Brick witnesses the family tumbling from the rooftop, mistaking the plummeting bodies for birds. Laronne is the former employer of Nella, Rachel’s mother, and is charged with sorting through the aftermath of the tragedy, trying to make sense of the event through only what fragments of the family is left behind: their belongings and their story, with its embellishments and rumors.

Like Laronne, the reader has to piece together the fractured picture of that day. Many pivotal characters stay on the periphery, darting in and out of the narrative through memories or secondhand accounts: Rachel’s father makes his voice heard through one chapter and through his encounters with Jamie; Nella speaks through her diaries, chronicling her journey towards sobriety; Rachel’s siblings are muted, as is the man that convinced Nella to leave her husband behind and move to Chicago to pursue a new life. The true story of what happened on that roof is elusive and evolving.

With such a startling and intriguing premise, Durrow still manages to shift the focus and drama of the story to Rachel’s life after the fall. The young girl not only tries to come to terms with her mother’s motives, her father’s distance, and her brothers’ deaths, but also tries to fit into a new culture that is at best dubious about her blue eyes and mixed race. Rachel seeks to establish herself as a “new girl,” with a new start after her the deaths of her brothers and mother, but finds she cannot escape from who she was and can only try to shape who she will become.

Durrow is a talented and eloquent storyteller. The metaphor of flight, both as flying and fleeing, is satisfyingly woven throughout the novel as the thread that unites characters and revelations. Durrow creates a affecting and personal portrait of a girl growing up in a world that expects her to define herself as either black or white, a stark decision she’s never considered and that makes her feel she is betraying the memory of her mother or the culture of her father and grandmother. Durrow’s novel deftly explores the idea that there is no singularity of truth, self-identity, or survival.

Written by: Jo Ristow, December 20th 2010

Going Away Shoes

priyanka — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Jill McCorkle

Algonquin Books

The protagonists of Jill McCorkle’s exciting collection of stories, Going Away Shoes, are middle-aged heterosexuals deep in the doldrums of life’s disappointments. Whether because of a stalled career, a divorce, a death, or simply the exhaustion born of juggling family, work and social obligations, these are women who’ve been battered by everyday tragedies and everyday pressures.

The title story introduces Debby Tyler. The oldest of three daughters, she has been left to care for her infirm mother. Since she has never been married, her two siblings assume that she has no life. Taut and spare, the story zeroes in on the role of memory in assuaging both guilt and desire; in addition, fantasy enters the mix as Debby imagines packing her bags and exiting the domestic hell she is mired in.

Marilyn, the protagonist of “Intervention,” is a retired woman who has become increasingly terrified of her husband’s escalated alcoholism. Her mistake, however, is mentioning this problem to her children, both of whom set out to plan a family intervention that will send their husband and dad into rehab. What ensues on the day of the expected confrontation is a fantastically moving reflection on long-term love that is both heartbreaking and filled with warmth and wisdom. The ways couples insulate themselves, and the ways the agendas of parents and children sometimes collide, makes this a particular stand-out in McCorkle’s eleven-story collection.

Other relationships also come in for scrutiny and sibling love meets sibling rivalry in “Another Dimension,” a tale that centers on the secrets and lies that both bind and divide us. Once kids no longer need to unite against parental forces, what purpose does maintaining long-maintained deception serve? McCorkle’s cudgel is sharp as she pierces the gut of duplicity and illuminates the limits of amends and apologies.

The anthology is heavy stuff told with wit, finesse, and abundant humor. In “Midnight Clear,” for example, the main character, a recently-divorced mother of two, is getting ready for a Christmas Eve bash when she suddenly notices a foul odor permeating her home. In short order the culprit is identified: Her septic tank is malfunctioning. This slice of what-can-go-wrong-will-go-wrong is made ever more horrific when we learn that the planned party will include the narrator’s ex and his new girlfriend. So what to do? A chance encounter with a guardian angel-cum-repairman—an elderly gent with stories to share—might have seemed contrived in less skilled hands. Here, however, it works and the magic of chance encounters is rendered with both grace and elegance.

McCorkle is a mature writer, someone who refuses to be lulled by blinders and palaver, a writer who notices every nuance and detail. Her woman are strong and capable, if sad. Yet at the same time, Going Away Shoes is a hopeful book in which the lure of untapped possibilities remains within reach. Like the golden ring on a carousel, her message suggests that if we keep our eye on the prize it just might find its way into our waiting hands.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, November 4th 2010

The Children in Room E4: American Education on Trial

admin — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 17:17:00 +0000

By Susan Eaton

Algonquin Books

No regular news consumer could avoid being informed of the failings of the educational system in the U.S. Every medium, new and old, is filled with the details of this country’s abysmal international rankings, the breakdown of school discipline, the costs of teaching to the test, the soaring dropout rate and the dearth of funding that leads school systems to abandon arts programs and other educational necessities. What is often left unexamined is one of the primary causes of many of these problems: de facto segregation by race and class. The Children in Room E4 intersperses intimate tales of one teacher’s valiant attempts to educate her students in the dysfunctional Hartford, Connecticut school system with the details of that community’s decline and the Sheff case waged against the system’s damaging segregation of its students.

Eaton’s examinations of the development of de facto segregation due to de-urbanization, economic decline, white flight to the suburbs and racism in the real estate market are carefully researched and well written. However, I would have preferred to see at least some mention of the impact of the government’s so-called war on drugs, which has been disproportionately waged in communities like Hartford. The absence of discussion on how racist and classist drug policies have destabilized poor and minority communities is, perhaps, the only major flaw in the book.

Whether in the courtroom or the classroom or the neighborhood, the book’s “characters” are presented as living, complex human beings, not caricatures in a morality play. The only two-sided characters seem to be those who appear in the opposition: the politicians, lawyers and “experts” who defend the segregated system and stall progress through inaction and incompetence. However, the opposition is given fair though not necessarily positive treatment.

The chapters concerning the denizens of Room E4 and the Hartford school system in general are particularly well-done. The overwhelming burden born by teachers like “Ms. Luddy,” who must cope with the disproportionate weight of students’ personal problems as well as educational politics, constantly changing curricula and poor funding, is revealed in excruciating and infuriating detail. Its impact on the developing minds of Hartford’s children is evident and seemingly inevitable. The circumstances can produce no other result, it seems, than the wholesale theft of opportunity from Hartford’s poor African American and Hispanic students. In our desire to maintain sanity in an unjust world, it’s easy to avoid wrestling with material like The Children in Room E4 and the problems they reveal. Don’t.

Written by: Melinda Barton, August 8th 2009

A Reliable Wife

admin — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 09:21:00 +0000

By Robert Goolrick

Algonquin Books

A Reliable Wife begins with anticipation. First, there’s the anticipation of Ralph Truitt, the businessman who owns all the large assets of the town, Truitt, which is named for his family. Ralph Truitt waits on the train platform for a train which is late arriving. As he waits, he is watched by the people of the town, blue-collar workers whose labor makes him wealthy, and who live cold and difficult lives as poor people in the isolated town that revolves around Ralph’s large house.

The train that is waited and watched for carries Ralph Truitt’s new wife—a plain and simple woman who sent a picture and a letter in response to Ralph Truitt’s plain and simple ad asking for a “reliable wife.” From the moment the woman steps off the train, the arrangement is far more complex than expected. Neither the picture nor the letter revealed who the woman truly is, or her reason for marrying Ralph Truitt.

The suspense of Ralph and the town waiting to see the wife who has answered the ad escalates into excitement when the carriage overturns on the way home from the station. Despite the isolation of the novel’s setting, deep in the woods of snowy Wisconsin, A Reliable Wife is a simmering page-turner. Goolrick’s sense of pacing is strong, with well-spaced revelations that deepen the characters and create even more questions about the story’s outcome. Catherine travels to St. Louis to retrieve Truitt’s son—the only living member of his family; he has lost his wife and daughter long ago. However, during this trip to St. Louis, in which the glittering city life contrasts with Truitt’s lonely and isolated Wisconsin home, we learn not only the glamorous and shockingly immoral lifestyle that Catherine Land managed to conceal, but also her connection to Truitt and her ultimate plan for their marriage.

A Reliable Wife is suspenseful and passionate, a great read, especially for fans of Victorian novels. Truitt has secrets about his dead wife and daughter and his faraway son, whose legitimacy is in question. Catherine uses her “honest and simple woman” front to divert attention from the deadly motives she has for Ralph Truitt and his money. However, despite the menacing pasts and motives of each of the character, they manage to develop not only a sensual but an emotional connection, somehow attracted rather than repulsed by one another’s sins. The twist at the end changes the plan that motivated Catherine to marry in the first place, reflects the power of the bond that forms between Catherine Land and Ralph Truitt.

Written by: Elizabeth F.A. Meaney, July 24th 2009

Mudbound

admin — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:04:00 +0000

By Hillary Jordan

Algonquin Books

Mudbound, the first novel by Hillary Jordan, is all about tension. Race, family, marriage, class, identity are all buzzing, pressing in the narrative, and all of them feed into the greatest tension of all: the classic survival story of man versus nature.

The first few pages describe two brothers scrambling to dig a makeshift grave ahead of an impending storm. This scene sets the tone and becomes, in many ways, a vivid metaphor for the entire narrative. The characters are constantly battling to stay one step ahead of the novel’s tragic but inevitable conclusion.

Henry McAllan, a man bent on making a living out of a scrap of land, moves his wife, their two young daughters, and his elderly father from their home in Memphis to a farm on the Mississippi Delta. Laura, Henry’s wife and the main narrator, feels dismayed and demoralized by every aspect of farm life—from the shack that the family lives in, to their strong-willed black sharecropping family, to Henry’s preferential love of the land she hates. Worst of all is Henry’s bigoted, cantankerous father who makes the family’s life miserable in every way he can.

Jamie, Henry’s handsome younger brother, soon arrives home from fighting in World War II. Jamie is winsome and charming, but troubled. Seemingly too caught up in his war memories to recognize the perils of the post-war South, he befriends Ronsel, the son of the McAllan’s sharecroppers, and he watches as Laura falls in love with the idea of saving him from his inner demons. Jordan does a good job of heightening drama by fracturing the storyline with the multiple narrators (each character narrates individual chapters, a la As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner). She also does a remarkable job of creating characters that speak with languid Southern drawl while at the same time keeping the plot tight and tense.

The comparisons to As I Lay Dying are inevitable. Even Jordan, in an interview with NPR](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067973225X?ie=UTF8&tag=feminrevie-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=067973225X), makes the connection, if a bit uncomfortably. It’s difficult to invoke a heavyweight classic and not be measured against it, and it seems that this sort of inspection often doesn’t bode well for the new challenger.

An in-depth analysis could be interesting: both books have thematic similarities as well as multiple narrators, cantankerous patriarchs or matriarchs that burden their families even in death, wild rivers, class tensions and even unusual and affecting descriptions of the sounds of coffins: scrubbing of lathes, banging of nails. The McAllans achieve a bit more closure and happiness than their Faulknerian counterparts, and the lives of Addie Bundren and Laura have many parallels. However, it’s implied that Laura finds more vindication in motherhood and may even gain respect and understanding for her stolid husband. Although this isn’t exactly empowerment, it’s a version of a happy ending.

In side-by-side scrutiny, it’s a bit tempting to think of Jordan’s novel as Faulkner with less of that bitter aftertaste. Nonetheless, Mudbound holds its own by addressing universal and timeless themes with an emotional gravitas and a remarkably steady hand for a first time author.

Written by: Jo Ristow, July 22nd 2009

The Music Teacher

admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:21:00 +0000

By Barbara Hall

Algonquin Books

The Music Teacher is a story of failure. It is the story of what could have been, but wasn’t—because of neglect, because of abuse, or for the simple reason that not everyone succeeds. Most people fail.

Protagonist Pearl Swain is one of these failures. Swain was a gifted violinist, but her father hated (and feared) her passion for music so strongly that he burned her violin in a backyard fire. Now Swain is a violin teacher rather than a professional musician, an occupation which she views as a failure. Her marriage is also a failure, having recently ended with her professor husband impregnating another woman and leaving her.

Now, Swain’s life revolves completely around the music store where she gives her lessons, and the staff there, with whom she socializes and debates favorite music and artists a la High Fidelity. Her romantic prospects are limited to the men at the shop. Her life as a music teacher changes when an orphan named Hallie comes in for lessons. Swain identifies with Hallie, who is gifted but lacks the support system necessary for success. While Swain is enamored of the girl’s talent, she discovers that Hallie’s personal problems are far more dangerous than she suspected. But is it already too late? Is Swain already involved enough in Hallie’s life to be harmed?

Hallie acts as the catalyst for many of Pearl’s realizations, about the process through which talent becomes achievement, about parents and family, about her own childhood, and her marriage. Although bitter, Swain is ultimately likeable. The book stands out because of its exploration of failure and its unique juxtapositional setting. (Swain lives in a trailer park in Los Angeles, the city of stardom.)

Unfortunately, neither the writing nor the story is remarkable enough to stay in a reader’s head for long, unless he or she is particularly interested in the career of a professional musician.

Written by: Elizabeth F.A. Meaney, July 21st 2009

Secret Son

admin — Sun, 03 May 2009 22:48:00 +0000

By Laila Lalami

Algonquin Books

Having read Laila Lalami’s short fiction collection Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, I was thrilled to find out she was working on her first novel, Secret Son. Often when I read first-time novelists, I notice some difficulty with dialogue (my own biggest downfall when I’m writing fiction), awkward clichés, and pages of text that don’t really keep the story moving. Lalami managed to escape all these snares and Secret Son is a joy from the beginning to the end.

On her personal blog, Lalami says she was recently asked why the main character is a man, and her response is “Youssef c’est moi”. One might ask just how a woman writes a book about a man, and if the book qualifies for a review from a feminist perspective. If you ask this, you need to read Secret Son.

The story is set in Morocco and tells of Youssef El-Mekki’s coming of age. Youssef is a young man who lives in the slums of Casablanca. He believes the story his mother has always told him: that his father died in an accident when he was very young. He lives as a fatherless child in a patriarchal society. The shocking discovery that his father is not only alive, but also rich, is a seeming fairy tale come true. His mother Rachida warns him that his heart will be broken, but Youssef moves away from her and into an apartment offered by his father. It is not so difficult to imagine the direction the story takes, and eventually Youssef is sent back to his mother after his father’s wife finds out about his existence.

There is commentary on the desperation of life in Casablanca for poor young men who feel drawn into the “family” of fundamentalist leanings or the escapism of drugs. The difficulties posed when living in multiple cultures and the self-discovery of an alternative way are explored when Youssef’s half-sister Amal studies in the U.S. and falls in love with a non-Muslim Latino. The truth of Youssef’s birth and his mother’s precarious living situation reveals an all-too-common truth of a class-conscious society, where the higher classes abuse the women of the lower classes and then discard them.

Although Youssef is the main character, the exploration of women’s roles—and the often stifling and hypocritical expectations put upon them—is a theme throughout the novel. Amal’s rebellion against her father and cultural norms—by insisting on studying in the United States and living with a non-Muslim, non-Arab man without marriage—is a perfect foil for Rachida’s story of love and betrayal by Youssef’s father Nabil, and the ultimate rebuilding of her life.

One of the most interesting things for me as both a writer and reader is the way the story’s narrative actually changes when different characters are speaking. For example, we see the initial meeting between Youssef and Nabil first through Youssef’s narrative and later through Nabil’s. When Nabil reminisces about the meeting there are inconsistencies between the two descriptions. In another area, a visit by Amal to Rachida also varies markedly between the two versions.

Unlike some books, the narrative does not clearly delineate that this part is from one point of view, and this other part is told from another. Instead, the story unfolds organically and it is up to you to catch these interesting discrepancies. I asked Lalami if it was intentional, and she explained: “The technique of using inconsistent dialogues in different points of view is absolutely willful on my part, and in fact I had to stop my copy-editor from trying to make it consistent. You are absolutely right that this is something that reinforces the fundamental fact that we each hear different things in a conversation.”

Lalami’s first novel is a jewel that takes her previously published short stories out for a longer spin and produces a beautiful and moving expose of Morocco’s duality—a duality that exists for many who are straddling two differing cultures. Lalami has taken the threads of several stories and sewn them together into one whole that shows how our lives entwine and how our choices change each other in both tangible and imperceptible ways.

Written by: Aaminah Hernández, May 3rd 2009

Doctor Olaf Van Schuler’s Brain

admin — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 23:33:00 +0000

By Kristen Menger-Anderson

Algonquin Books

A thriller that spans five centuries, Doctor Olaf Van Schuler’s Brain is entertaining and thought provoking. Thirteen generations of eccentric New York City doctors navigate genius, madness and morality. This book is eerie, smart, unique, and very delicately crafted, telling many stories in every layer of time.

The Van Schulers and Steenwycks are a family of eccentric, genius, medical people, mostly doctors, some more on the fringe than others, some mad. Each has his unique specialty. Their fallibilities play out over obsessions with the brain and the mind. Each generation is engaged in inventing a medical fad of the era. For some, the result is tragic. For most it is less clear whether the result has been heroic or tragic. Always, someone has been fooled.

One physician hides both his mother’s extreme madness and his study of the brain from the Catholic Church. He is convinced he will cure her. He also suffers from lunacy. His obsession with collecting the brains of deceased animals escalates into a gruesome, out of control spiral that condemns them both. Others are almost as odd, though less secretive and polarized. One testifies in favor of a philandering widow, that his deceased wife died of spontaneous combustion by alcoholism. Another performs an experimental surgery, one of the first lobotomies, on his younger sister, hiding this from his older sisters. One Steenwyck is a medicine showman. Wives swallow gulps of radium to promote fertility and feed it to their husbands, revealing secret wishes.

The Steenwycks continue the tradition of cutting edge medicine into the modern era. The protagonists in the last two or three chapters happen to be women. Neither the oddness nor the deceit seem quite as striking or overt in the last era. But maybe that is because we are living in the same time. This novel is quite a reflection on changes in beliefs and the application of science. The only time the change seemed abrupt was the later shift to the 1980s, though maybe that is because it is closer to now. This is what makes it so thought provoking: the gradual transition from backward ways that were once new, all the way to the controversial new.

The novel was truly a pleasure to read and thoroughly researched. The odd medical techniques are real, and nested in the beliefs and social climate of each era. It would be especially fun for anyone interested in the history of medicine. It would be interesting to use to generate discussion in a seminar related to ethics, the history of medicine, or the history of New York City.

Written by: Heather Irvine, April 17th 2009

Between Here and April

admin — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 22:10:00 +0000

By Deborah Copaken Kogan

Algonquin Books

Deborah Copaken Kogan’s novel Between Here and April begins with Elizabeth Burns, a modern New York journalist and mother of two young girls, recalling her first-grade friend April Cassidy’s sudden disappearance. As a child, Elizabeth accepted her teacher’s vague explanation that April would not return to school, but as an adult she is shocked by the brief newspaper articles summarizing the gruesome crime committed by April’s mother, Adele.

Unfulfilled with the “fluff” journalism that allows her flexible hours to raise her daughters, Elizabeth seizes on the challenge of investigating this story further. Kogan’s novel is at its best when Elizabeth speaks to Adele’s neighbors and even gains access to notes from her counseling sessions. Each revelation of the spiraling loneliness of Adele’s life as a wife and mother (made especially sympathetic by her doctor’s ignorance of post-partum depression) seems to illuminate the difficulty of Elizabeth’s own life. Her struggles with her career, marriage and sex life, rising childcare costs, and the pressures of motherhood illustrate the progress and enduring questions of mothers from different generations.

As the case stagnates, the author attempts to weave in increasingly complex threads from Elizabeth’s past. Her reunion with a past lover and a flashback to a turning point in Elizabeth’s journalism career in the Middle East seem to stray from the core themes of motherhood and self-identity in the novel where Kogan is most effective at blending the past and present. Elizabeth’s concerns about these more disparate aspects of her life seem less relatable, perhaps because they are so late introduced.

Overall, this was an interesting and thought-provoking read, shedding light on an aspect of motherhood, post-partum depression that is not always addressed openly. The construction of the plot at times lacks direction, but it is clear that Kogan has many interesting issues to write about, and we should look forward to more work from her in the future.

Written by: Elizabeth F.A. Meaney, March 21st 2009