Idra Novey

[b:Those Who Knew|38649811|Those Who Knew|Idra Novey|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1523278416s/38649811.jpg|60261103] held my attention from the beginning with its first sentence: "Precisely a week after the death of Maria P. was declared an accident, a woman reached into her tote bag and found a [worn] sweater inside that didn't belong to her." She tries unsuccessfully to return it to the clerk in the store. How did it get in her bag? Who was Maria P. and what did her death have to do with the woman with the bag? There are lingerie mysteries, disappearing stains and ghosts. In short, pithy chapters, the author introduces a small cast of characters living in an unnamed island nation assumed to be in Latin America with its corrupt politics, disparate economy and striking students and its strong connection to the "northerners" assumed to be North Americans. A surrealist script for a play or two, and a journal feed the reader's sense of confusion and questioning. Lena is a key character and her friend and activist, Olga who runs a bookstore called Seek the Sublime or Die, provides a perspective to Lena's resentment of the abusive Senator who kissed her after she made her first Molotov cocktail. His viciousness and suspicious abuse of others threatens his office, although it's a stinky pig farm which topples him. One of my favorite lines: Olga to Lena "I think you're reading too much Saramago." Some rich food descriptions liven Oscar, the baker from the north. And this depiction of a failing marriage: "all that had been solid between them begin to liquefy, the edges of their marriage melting as if it had consisted of no more than a block of ice....[he] felt the drip, drip between them quickening." The book had some editing flaws which irritated me but the writing and pacing made for satisfying reading even with abrupt ending.… (más)

Told in alternating voices of Jean, the stepmother, and Leah, the stepdaughter, who have been estranged for many years. Though devoted to Leah, Jean divorced Leah's father when she was ten because of the father's emotionally abusive behavior toward Jean. Always an outsider in the rural Appalachian community both because she was Jewish and longed to be an artist, Jean is both unwilling and unable to leave the community. She inherits her father's home in a distressed neighborhood and begins to weld sculptures in the living room using scrap metal from a family junk yard.

Leah has grown up, become multilingual, married a man from Chile, and has a young son. She is contacted by Elliot, a man living with Jean, to tell her that Jean has died and left all of her art to Leah. While Jean's chapters precede her death, Leah's chapters take place in the aftermath of Jean's death, chronicling her return, with her blended family, to the depressed Appalachian community rife with excessive nationalism and bigotry.

In a relatively short book, the author explores the inner drive to create. And the contrast between lives that have access to education and opportunity and those who do not. It's a thought provoking novel and I look forward to more of this author's writing.… (más)

Missed connections, false perceptions and good intentions. I can't believe I never heard of Novey. She is a creative, beautiful writer with quirky, compelling characters which is right up my alley. Jean and Leah tell of their lives in alternating chapters but never come together in this novel. When Jean and Leah were separated by an acrimonious divorce, they remained as potent forces in thought but rarely in person. What brings them together if Jean's bequest to Leah of her manglements, decades of creativity for its own sake. Into all of this comes a lost boy, Elliot.… (más)