Customer Reviews

All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost: A Novel

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AIFNIL is easily read with incredibly tight structure and precise language but you can't stop thinking about it when you reach the end. Some passages are so beautifully written you will go over them repeatedly.

On the surface it is a story of esoteric academia but as you read you will witness relationships between flawed individuals, their struggles to define and achieve happiness, narcissism vs. the desire for intimacy, the damage caused by failed family relationships, the effort required to create art and so much more. This novel is heartbreaking.

I would suggest picking up another copy to share because you will want to keep yours for the bookshelf.

Kudos to the Rumpus Book Club because I would not have found this on my own.
[...].

Who is TRULY qualified to tell you if you're a great or not?

That's the basis of Lan Samatha Chang's latest novel All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost.

The novels succeeds on many levels:

1) Mood and Tone: Reading this novel is almost like watching a movie where the colors are a dark-bluish. I simply felt the world around me stop as I read through each section.

2) Economy of Language. Chang delves into issues of achievement, doubt, worthiness, infidelity, guilt and betrayal with frighteningly simple language. This novel won't send you hunting for your dictionary.

Also, the writing is very visual. Often novelists stray from the story path to get on their soap boxes to talk about other issues NOT related to the story. Not Chang. She has a laser-beam focus on the story path from beginning to end.

3) Resonance: You may start to think about your own success after reading this novel, and who you allow to define whether your work is a success or failure.

This is a sparse, atmospheric novel that moves along at lightening speed. I will read again, and will recommend to others.

What a great read. I think Lan Samantha Chang has totally nailed it -- the lives and lot of poets. The four main characters, over the course of their lives, live out four related but very different life trajectories. Miranda is the stern distant demanding teacher, worshipped and feared by her students, who has an affair with one, and ends up choosing his first book for a prize, setting his career in motion, even while her own has peaked. Roman is the brilliant, lucky student, who grows to get the prizes, the university teaching gigs, the fame, but who ends up unhappy, unfulfilled, feels perhaps even a fraud. Bernard is the recluse, working all his life on one long unpublished poem, and carrying on letter-writing correspondences with "the writers of our time," who is jealous of Roman, but remains committed to his personal artistic vision-- he is perhaps the "true poet" of the four. Lucy is the poet who puts her carreer on hold to be wife and mother, supportive of another's career, and only returns to her writing later in life, renewed. It's a fascinating study of the motivations and drives and desires of poets; the relationships between students and mentors, poetry friends, poetry marriages; how things change (and don't change) over time. How in many ways "all that matters is the work." Or should it be -- "all that matters is the relationships?" Highly recommended.

This rather esoteric novel takes root in academia, postulating the question of learned craft vs. natural talent, growing from the seeds of academia to the fully-fleshed struggles of characters who have taken their love of poetry into the world at large. For one promising young poet in particular, Roman Morris, the critique of his instructor, the enigmatic and brilliant Miranda Sturgis, far outweighs the opinions of his classmates. Miranda becomes the focus of Roman's quest, the arbiter of future success. And in the hubris of youth and ambition, Roman is oblivious to the far-reaching consequences of his actions. Classmate Barnard Sauvet has a more defined goal, an epic poem about the 19th century exploration of Wisconsin by missionary Jacques Marquette and trapper Louis Joliet.

Bernard lives frugally in a tiny rent-controlled Manhattan apartment, hardly interacting with others socially, save his friendship with Roman and Lucy Parry, another classmate. Lucy offers Roman words of encouragement when he is plagued by self-doubt, shielding his poems from the critical others in Miranda's seminar. Miranda is pivotal in this novel and these lives, touching each in unexpected ways as they fall into the rhythms of daily demands in the years after graduation. Roman remains the touchstone of this experience, the successful poet by which to measure the others, a prestigious prize upon graduation ushering him into a world he had only imagined. That same prize is at the root of his discontent, the gradual reshaping of his personal narrative. The world of poetry is insular, passionate, the debate between craft and talent endless. And for all the careless assumptions, the judgments made in haste, time inters the simple longings of youth under layers of memory and regret.

The lessons come late to a man so convinced of his vision, Roman's success bittersweet for all it has cost him. Weaving together the experiences of these characters, Miranda, Roman, Bernard and Lucy, an imagined future is distorted by one man's hubris, another's profound humility, words crowding together like excited children demanding to be chosen, the perfect phrase in a finished poem. The abstract is brought to life as Chang portrays internal struggles with a surgeon's precision in unexpected moments of illumination. Luan Gaines/2010.

This is a rare novel that creates a very distinct mood. There's a kind of stillness but at the same time, there are profound feelings that the author creates among her three major characters. There were no words wasted in this novel; I had the sense that the author chose every word carefully, much like the poets she describes, who labored over every word until they were able to communicate exactly what they wanted.

I love the way this novel moves. The opening is deceptive: a seemingly straightforward description of some writing students that is disturbing and, occasionally, funny. In the second and third parts, the novel builds and builds. The leaps forward in time somehow mirror the increasing fleetness of life as we grow older. At some point, I realized that I was actually reading an examination of the key moments in a man's experience over decades. In this way, the form surprised me. Characters surprised me. I think that the writer knew precisely what she was doing, and her ruthlessness is admirable. The novel is not conventional in that it does not ask us to like the protagonist or to approve of what he does, but I ultimately recognized his humanity and sympathized with him at the book's stunning and very moving close--a man looking back upon the meaning of his youthful ambitions and choices.

I received an early copy as a gift and what a wonderful gift it is. Once I started reading, I could not put it down. I then ordered more copies to be given to friends as gifts as I plan to reread my copy of AIFNIS over and over again.

Going into this book, I thought that the main character would be Miranda, the elusive teacher whose attention is desired by all of her students. On the back of my copy of "All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost" - she is described as charismatic and mysterious. That and the fact that the book is about modern day poets intrigued me.

Interestingly, though, I finished the book thinking nothing about Miranda and having experienced very little poetry.

Roman, the main character, dominates the book, as well of most of the relationships in his life. His complicated relationship with his teacher, Miranda, his relationships with the other poetry students, his friendship with Bernard...all are overpoweringly focused on Roman. Even what remains of his family depends solely on him.

"He understood now, viscerally, something he had only suspected as a child: that he was his family's aftermath. The most urgent betrayals, the great conflagration that had destroyed his family: all of it had taken place before he could remember, and the last traces were now burning out in the lightning synapses of Emily's winter dreams."

The problem with the book being so Roman focused is that he is a character that is so closed off - so inaccessible to the reader (at least this reader) that there is very little passion or fire to this book. I spent the first 1/8 of the book learning about the characters and then the remaining part of the book feeling as if the action taking place was all anti-climatic...with little idea what the climactic event might have been.

The women characters tell Roman at various times in his life that his poetry is guarded in such a way...that "there's something hidden about the poems. They draw attention and give nothing back."

It was also interesting that in a story about poets...there is very little poetry. Either actual poetry or poetic prose. There is some, which is lovely and whet the reader's appetite for more:

"For a moment, he stood sniffing the winter air, the mixture of burning firewood and cold, which had spoken to him since childhood of other people's easy lives."

I did like the book...I suppose the problem is that I expected to love it. I expected to have words to savor and emotive ideas to try and wrap my head around. But most of that seemed trapped...somewhere. Actually, my feelings about the book are best summed up - by the main character of the book himself.

"Something he had been waiting for, some powerful transcendence for which he had held his breath, would not take place."

**Reviewed for [...]**


All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost by Lan Samantha Chan is a haunting, and creative novel about how there is so much more to people than what is presented. The novel is fluid and almost dreamlike at times, making the text flow as if the story is taking place right in front of you. Chan does not waste time on flowery descriptions or unnecessary character development. The story structure and the characters are bare boned and structurally sound. This works with the story, because it is the raw and intense emotion that is the major focus of the story.
Roman is a poet who left a lucrative banking job in order to pursue his writing career. While in grad school, he becomes friends with other members of his class, the eccentric and almost ethereal, Bernard. The connection that the two have in school is more than surface as they are intellectual counterparts as well as friends, and this relationship continues on throughout their lives. Their teacher, a famous poet and harsh critic Miranda, becomes a source of inspiration and conflict for the story. Miranda is closed down and inaccessible, but when she and Roman begin an affair, much comes spilling out. As the years continue, Roman marries another student from graduate school, continues writing, teaches, and raises a son. After winning a prestigious award for his work and after Bernard comes to stay with the family for a brief time, the truth about the past and the truth about concealed emotions begin to unfold.
Chan takes the reader through an emotional ride that is exposed slowly. The emotions described in the novel, range from flat to heart wrenching. The fluidly of Chan's words, makes the transition between the extreme emotions the characters go through completely relatable. No strong emotional bond is ever really formed with any of the characters, but it almost doesn't need to happen, as all are so removed into themselves even though they interact, that each really needs to be looked at individually. I have read Chan's other works, and while I enjoy them and her style of writing, I do feel that the way she presents her haunting tales is an acquired taste. This book is not for someone who is looking for an easy or forgettable read.

ALL IS FORGOTTEN, NOTHING IS LOST opens to a bludgeoning. The setting is a poetry workshop in a 1980s MFA program at a Midwestern college, and the weapon is a style of manuscript critique filled with posturing, condescension and dismissal -- evocative of the real-life reputation of the (University of) Iowa Writers' Workshop (at least prior to author Chang becoming its director).

The harshness introduces the novel's first question: *How* should writing (poetry specifically and art more generally) be taught? Does support inspire an artist, or brutality dissuade? Chang then follows two of the workshop poets into their professional years -- one mostly successful, the other mostly starving -- to explore a more basic question: *Can* writing/art be taught or is it an innate talent? Does instruction merely make it possible, as one of the poets muses, "to write a better book, perhaps, but not to become a better poet"? And then the most fundamental question: *Why* do artists even make art?

The explorations are oblique in this literary novel, and via a distant narrative voice. But a story builds, and a passage that "longing matters in literature, more than love" resonates. By the last third of this short novel, the longing becomes superb.

(Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher.)