Customer Reviews

The Nobodies Album

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There's a lot going on in this book.

The framework that sort of houses the multi-layered story is somewhat of a murder mystery. It's not the strongest part of the story (in my opinion) but definitely works to house the rest of the story: What's most important ... the relating and the relationships.

Olivia Frost, a fairly successful author, has decided that her 8th novel should be new endings for her previous seven books. She's estranged from her rock-star son, until he's accused of murder, and they have tragedy in their family history. The details of their past, and snippets of each of the "alternate endings" are woven throughout the book.

Reading the "endings" was like having short stories in the midst of a novel, and though I hated being jarred out of the main story, I really enjoyed those parts and as with most short stories, they were over just as I was wishing there was more.

Parkhurst does grief and family dynamics so well. There are scenes between the mother and son that are so relatable to me, I felt she could have plucked them right out of my own dialog. There's darkness and sadness, and a little bit of humor.

The writing is great, and as with Parkhurst's previous novels, she really creates atmosphere and emotion. It's a really fast-paced read.

I enjoyed it immensely, and will now begin the wait for Parkhurt's next, and hoping it won't be a terribly long wait.

Carolyn Parkhurst's "The Nobodies Album" is, on the surface, a fairly routine murder mystery. But describing it as such is to shortchange the complexities of this unique, uncompromising, and pretty wonderful novel. In addition to the central mystery, Parkhurst delivers one of the most searing and unflinching looks at familial alienation one is likely to encounter. Layered into an unconventional literary narrative, "The Nobodies Album" confronts how people cope with tragedy and how they can come to terms with and struggle to change the existence they've fallen into. Meaningful and emotionally satisfying, I ended up feeling that the central plot device (the murder itself and its resolution) to be the least compelling thing about the book.

Centered around a famous novelist Octavia Frost, "The Nobodies Album" explores her troubled relationship with her son Milo. When Milo, a renowned alt-rocker in San Francisco, discovers his fiancée brutally murdered after a night in which he has blacked out--he finds himself the prime suspect in the international media circus that follows. Having been estranged from Milo for many years, Octavia sees this as a chance for reconnection and redemption. The two share a difficult past, their relationship never having fully recovered from the accidental death of Octavia's husband and daughter. And it is the tentative progress of their bond that propels the heart of Parkhurst's story.

The grand success of "The Nobodies Album" rests on the character of Octavia Frost. Maddening and emotionally distant, it is her struggle to try to put the past into a meaningful context that drives the narrative. In alternate chapters, we are treated to various excerpts from her past novels in addition to their newly revised endings. Her current project (the titular experiment called "The Nobodies Album") is to alter these pages to reflect her current state of mind--and, in a way, erase some of the more personal and painful aspects of herself from the books. But dealing with Milo in the present showcases the importance of building on and confronting past mistakes as opposed to trying to make them disappear. Octavia is a difficult character to love, or even like, and yet I identified with her in a thousand ways. Parkhurst doesn't shy away from the unpleasant aspects of her personality and, in being so frank, has created a character that will endure in my memory for many months to come.

Other reviewers have referred to the murder mystery as the central plot point and thus what the book is about. It isn't. The mystery is secondary, and the genius of this book is Parkhurst's ability to once again give us a wealth of characters, each of whom she makes mulit-faceted for the readers. Central is the writer, of course, and we discover her as layers and layers peel away. She, like all Parkhurst's characters is deliciously complex. The novels she has "written" and the reasons she wants to revisit them and the ways they relate to what we are learning about her life--Pure Delight.

Character development, quirky and original plots, and simply beautiful writing are the prizes waiting for readers of Parkhurst.

I adore all three of Parkhurst's books, and I recommend them with virtual applause.

It's been a VERY long time since I've read a book straight through, and I really haven't felt the need to see a book through in once sitting, but I could *not* put "The Nobodies Album" down.

The central character of the story is Octavia Frost, a fairly successful author who has suffered a significant amount of family tragedy. As a result, she'sbecome both distant and painfully self-obsessed. She's on her way to submit her newest novel to her editor when she finds out that her son (Milo, a young musician) has been arrested for the brutal murder of his girlfriend. Octavia drops what's she doing and travels across the country to be by his side, even though he hasn't spoken to her in years, incensed by one of her novels. Once there, Octavia tends to Milo (and their broken relationship) the best she can, and in the process, learns *many* things not only about her relationship with Milo, but also the twisted foundations she has based her entire life on.

"The Nobodies Album" is so many things- a murder mystery, a story of the tricky relationship between a parent and a child, a memoir about recovery after a devastating event, and a tale of a woman's second chance as the mother she never thought she could be.

"The Nobodies Album" also has a somewhat mind-bending quality to it- sprinkled in between the chapters of Octavia and Milo's story are the final chapters of several of the books Octavia has written (all of them fairy creepy and tragic), followed directly by Octavia's attempts to "rewrite" these final chapters in a last-ditch effort to prove that the past does not define the future. Although the stories these "final chapters" are from are not presented to the reader in full, Carolyn Parkhurst gives just enough information to not only make these brief tales both accessible and engaging to the reader, but also strangely mesmerizing. I found myself wishing that several of these fictional books were actually out there, so I could read more.

I'm NOT a fan of tragic stories- I read books to escape a bit, not to be drowned in suffocating heartbreak. I guess I'm fairly sensitive when it comes to issues of suffering and sadness. And when I read the synopsis for "The Nobodies Album", I was concerned it might be a rough read. But Carolyn Parkhurst is a brilliant and gifted writer, and the way she writes is almost poetic. She manages to lull the reader into the same strange calm that Octavia must force herself to feel in order to be present and useful to Milo at a time when he needs his mother the most. And in doing so, she discovers Milo has his *own* story to tell.

At one point in the book, Octavia thinks to herself:
"It's not frightening, the way I thought it might be. This is not a horror movie or a Halloween haunted house. It's the nucleus of a human tragedy. A life ended here, and the circumstances under which it happened - however wretched, however monstrous - should not be the focus." That quote says a great deal about this entire story.

I highly recommend this book.

Competence is sometimes the enemy of genius. Carolyn Parkhurst, author of The Nobodies Album, is much more than just a competent writer. She is way above that designation for she can light the reader on fire. She took me to a place I've rarely entered in literary fiction - a universe of ideas from which spring countless possible ways to make sense of our lives and losses.

The Nobodies Album is about pondering those things said that might have been stated differently. Specifically, the protagonist, Octavia Frost, is a prolific author who is rewriting the last chapters of all her novels. Each final chapter - the original one and the rewritten one - tells us more about the writer's life and her spectacular griefs and losses. We enter a free-fall with her and watch her life wash away before our eyes.

There is an alternate narrative going on in this novel at the same time as Octavia's chapters are being rewritten. This narrative is in the here and now and is about the author's estranged son, Milo. He is a famous rock star who has been accused of killing his lover in a drunken frenzy. Octavia immediately flies out to San Francisco to be with Milo despite the estrangement. We know early on in the book that Octavia has lost her daughter and her husband many years ago, but we are not privy to the details. We only know that Octavia has a fierce love for Milo, her 'difficult' child, and she has a visceral need to be with him during this trying time.

The novel is a treasure house of ideas and mysteries. Many of the chapters about Milo and his life are followed by chapters from Octavia's novels and then her rewriting of these chapters. This is not an easy book to read but it is rich and satisfying and memorable as are the best books in a reader's life.

It is fascinating to look back at the evolution of this book's journey from almost free-form fear and loss to the realization that there are things to hold on to, things to grasp for dear life. Octavia, at one point, discusses a woman who is building a 'mystery house'. She is a wealthy woman who has lost her husband and daughter. In her grief, she thinks demons are chasing her in her home and she hires workers to constantly build and add on to her house. "She believes that if the house she's building is ever completed, she'll die." In a sense, Octavia Frost's rewriting of her chapters is her way to keep working and hold on to life. Will she find peace and rest? I can only encourage you to read this novel, the best one I've read this year.

I was captivated by this book for a few hundred pages. I felt a fierce and serious attachment, even taking it to read when I went to brush my teeth and putting it on my car's passenger seat so I could zip through a few paragraphs at stoplights. I loved the author's word choice, her chatty inner voice, her scab-picking analyses of mother-child relationships. I looked forward to the interludes with the redone chapters from other books, feeling that they added texture and dimension to the real story.

Somewhere around 2/3 of the way through the book, I felt my energy start to wane. Maybe I was getting weary of those other-book asides, so many wretched children and parents, so many ways to shred a family. What had once seemed clever and insightful had become banal. The initial tension created by the opening setup -- the murder (of someone who never seems more than one-dimensional), the accusation of guilt (which we're pretty sure from the beginning won't stick), and the rift in the mother-son relationship (which evaporates shortly after the two meet in person) -- could only propel the plot so far. And the moments of doubt started to creep in. Could I accept that this thoughtful and articulate mom had simply allowed her son to step out of her life for four years? And why were the police and the lawyer with the $1000 ties so inept that they left wide avenues of possibility unexplored, allowing mom to do the detective work and solve the crime? Never mind the unlikelihood of the whose-baby-is-that complication. When you have to resort to such conceits to keep the plot together...well, maybe it's time to rethink the plot. (Suffice to say I found the solution to the crime a bit of an eye-roller, but it would be giving away too much of the story to explain why.)

The glue that keeps the book together is the event that dissolved Octavia's and Milo's family. There are allusions throughout the book, and the reader -- at least this reader -- somehow expected that the description of that episode would pull together a lot of disparate pieces and give the book a concluding punch. But the punch was so muffled I barely felt it; maybe by that time I was too disappointed to care. Ultimately, the strongest component of this book is the mother-son relationship, and it just didn't have enough power to make this book sizzle. I wanted them to meet their issues head on, maybe have a few screaming fights, but given Milo's level of enervation and Octavia's determination not to climb off the eggshells, it wasn't going to happen.

I'm calling it 3.75 stars, rounded up to 4. Not great, but a fast read, and as a toothbrushing companion, you could do worse.

Octavia Frost is a successful author, but her success came late and her stories tend to be dark. She is haunted by tragedy and loss: her husband and daughter died in an accident and she is estranged from her son, who has refused to have contact with her for four years. Milo, the son, is a rock star, a hugely successful songwriter living in San Francisco and seemingly basking in the good life. Octavia is conflicted; she knows she wasn't as good a parent to Milo as his dad was, and yet has said and written into her novels things that Milo finds unforgivable. She feels, like most writers, that her characters and plots are separate entities and not exactly tied to her 'real' life and situations, but she has to acknowledge that there is definitely a bleed-through effect; it can't be helped.

The alienation of Milo and the effects of time, however, have prompted a new book for Octavia, though. She is on her way to deliver a new manuscript, called The Nobodies Album (a title that comes from a childhood game of Milo's), in which she has reworked the endings to almost all of her published books. She has taken pains to remove the personal endings that reflected her own grief, and to revisit the stories' endings in light of all that has happened since they were penned. As Parkhurt's book proceeds, we get these Octavia Frost endings, along with their revisions, and they do reflect the process that unfolds in the larger narrative.

Octavia's publisher is in San Francisco, but once her flight lands, she finds her plans altered immediately when she reads a newsfeed crawl announcing that her famous son has just been arrested for murdering his girlfriend. At first paralyzed, and then moved to contact the people around Milo, Octavia finds herself drawn into the mystery around the girlfriend's death and gradually back into her son's world. Parkhurst is good with characters - Octavia is sharp and sentimental, bruised and proud, but a woman the reader comes to understand, even if we don't agree with her choices. Milo also becomes a full person, and the exchanges between them are fragile and realistic. Although the book jacket says this is "a highly suspenseful murder mystery," it isn't really. It's about a mother and son, both damaged and coming to terms with it. That's where it shines.

This is Carolyn Parkhurst's third novel and I have found all three to be quite enjoyable in their own right. Of the three novels, though, I found this one to be the best constructed and most complex. In this page turner, the protagonist, Octavia Frost, slowly comes to the realization that both literally and figuratively it is not possible to re-write the past no matter how much one would like to. Octavia comes to this conclusion as she contemplates re-writing the endings of books that she has authored, and as she becomes re-acquainted with her rock star son that stands accused of murdering his girlfriend. I was not sure the premise would work, but it did and I found myself becoming more captivated with the turn of each page.

This novel is like nesting Russian dolls -- novels within novels all beautifully intertwined and elegantly written. Yes, it's a whodunit, but a whodunit with layers of meaning. This is a deeply satisfying book which works on many levels, not the least of which is Ms. Parkhurst's use of language and metaphor. This author was born with stories in her veins, and a knack for juggling dozens of small mysteries and undercurrents into one multicolored tapestry with a completely satisfying finale. Writing about writing is something authors are cautioned no to do. Thank God Parkhurst, who has written a beautiful book about what it feels like to be a writer, did not heed such advice. If you can only pack one book for the weekend, pack The Nobodies Album and pray for rain. Eileen Pierce

This is the first Carolyn Parkhurst novel I've read and now I'm ready to read her earlier novels.

Novelist Octavia Frost lives very much in her own mind, much like many solitary people in the 21st Century. She is estranged from her famous son but is able to share his life vicariously through websites and magazines until she learns from a news crawl in Times Square he is accused of murdering his girlfriend/fiance.

We follow Octavia's quest to reunite and help her son through his troubles. All of this part of the novel is satisfactory and a interesting story. I would chuckle when Octavia would catch herself putting her thoughts into story form. During the course of the novel she hints at the tragedy that took the lives of her husband and daughter mostly through peeks at her earlier novels. I found this part the least satisfactory part of the novel.

For starters, I don't think successful authors write in 7 different genres as is indicated from her 7 endings. The only style missing seems to be a murder mystery.

After a long list of disappointing books I am glad I found this one.

Edited to correct my first line. I went back and reviewed my recent reading/listening list and realized I read Lost and Found. I really enjoyed that book also and will definitely keep Ms. Parkhurst on my short list of authors to seek out.