30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A mix of blemish and brilliance, September 29, 2008
This review is from: I See You Everywhere (Hardcover)
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Julia Glass has flair for what Flaubert called the mot juste, the exquisitely right expression or word. She spins straw into gold with wise witticisms, well-crafted metaphors, and meaningful meditations on life. Her language has a layered intelligence; her inner dialogue reverberates and resounds, mirrors and bounces. As she demonstrated in a previous novel, The Whole World Over, Glass is capable of handling a versatile range of characters in a balanced, compelling story. She is also a National Book Award winner for Three Junes (which I have not yet read). However, in this latest novel, her talents did not coalesce--the whole was not a sum of its parts.
Although her insights were just as evident as ever, the story suffered from constriction and a one-note tone for most of the narrative. Yet, it is Glass' ability to conjure ripe phrases with robust philosophizing that kept me intermittently riveted through to the end of the novel. I was glad that I finished it, because she redeemed much of the sagging story in the final chapter.
In this double narrative of well-bred Rhode Island sisters, she spans twenty-five years (1980-2005) of their adult lives. She depicts the connections, disconnections, and missed connections to each other and to their own ideas of self in isolation and in relation to others.
Written in a quasi-diarized style, Glass alternates between older sister Louisa, who has more conventional aspirations, and Clem, her buccaneer sister. Louisa is a Harvard grad art editor and self-proclaimed failed potter desiring true love, babies, and recognition. Wily Clem, a wildlife scientist, eschews love and seeks sexual adventures as she travels to remote areas of the country studying fish, whales, birds, and bears.
Lousia and Clem were engaging, clever, provocative, and sympathetic, but the author's tone and dialogue did not adequately provide distinction of the two narrative voices. Although the tone is fittingly ironic when the sisters engaged in wry self-reflection, it eventually became overindulgent and tedious. Instead of two narrators, it felt like one narrator pretending to be two people. This led to confusion when I began a chapter or new section of narrative. We know Clem and Louisa by what they did and how they lived and thought, but I had to rely on information that was often teased out too cagily in order to know which character was speaking. The necessary shades and contours of separate voices were missing. Even in context, the voices were often difficult to identify.
The progression of events drifted, sometimes aimlessly or messily. After some juicy inner dialogue, for instance, the narrative would often become stilted and expository. During these expository phases, the story went flat, the center did not hold. The author began telling rather than showing, displaying rather than revealing. Long passages of wildlife descriptions, for instance, did not feel fluidly connected to the story--it seemed like I was reading from National Geographic cut and pasted into the scene. It was artificial, like Glass was straining for a device in order to move events along. Dramatic tension inevitably snared--the narrative would gather momentum, offer a dramatic pause and wilt. The characters' thoughts stayed elastic but the story itself was stiff and narrowly executed. The important events were explained, often offhandedly, in a desultory tone.
Clem, Louisa, an eccentric Aunt Lucy and a panic-driven mother were the only characters with buoyancy. The men in their lives, including their father, did not resonate. They existed, I felt, as contrivances. There was another character, a male employee of their mother, who entered with a blaze of comic zaniness and provided a dramatic surge for the sisters. However, he just as quickly disappeared with an ambiguous resolution. I felt manipulated, as if he were only there to provide counterpoint to Louisa and Clem--don't get attached, he is going away, no longer useful.
The climax also felt synthetic. I do not want to give spoilers, so I can only describe my response. It felt like the author decided to assault the consistency of character in order to make a point about the elusiveness of human nature and the enigma of the human condition. I came to the conclusion that she never intended the characters to have a life of their own beyond the decisions she made prior to putting pen to paper. In her vision to place them outside the box, she paradoxically boxed them in.
The anti-climax was thoughtful and redeemed the manufactured denouement. The author pondered the climactic events through character and plot, giving the reader a rest from endless insouciance. The mood was suitably contemplative and compassionate, and when I finished the last sentence, I closed the book with a piece of my heart pierced and open.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Who Am I Without You?, October 12, 2008
This review is from: I See You Everywhere (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
In the novel
I See You Everywhere , the two sisters, Louisa and Clem, speak to us in their alternate voices, to reveal their distinctive qualities; as unique as each one is, the bond they share is heightened by their distinct individuality.
Louisa is the oldest - the conscientious student and the one who longs for marriage, children and an art career - while Clement (Clem) is the daring one - the rebel, uncontainable, and irresistible to men.
Their story begins in the eighties and continues for more than a decade - and then veers off in a new direction when their bond is tragically severed.
In Clement's voice, we learn how she feels about her life, her choices: "Sometimes I feel uncommitted to life, or to mine. I feel as if what I thought was going to be My Life (the Siamese twin) quietly snuck off on her own when I wasn't looking, chose a different fork in
the trail a ways back, and sometimes our two paths cross, so I bump into My Life by accident, and I say, `Here you are! Where have you been?' "
An excerpt from Louisa's story reveals and sums up how different she feels from Clem - how different she is... "About the only thing we had in common that summer was solitude. Or so I was led to believe. Mine was a solitude of retreat and longing, fraught with wishes and sighs - but Clem's I imagined as sure and intrepid, a flight from everything soft about civilization. I was copy-editing ruminations on art. Clem was counting seals...We communicate best by mail. On the phone, we argue. In person, we tend to become sarcastic. Our letters, though, have a touch of romantic collusion."
From an early age, the girls are rivals, even as they cling to each other to define them as individuals and as part of a unit known as sisters. They validate each others' feelings, even though they disagree about so much. Through the years, the strength of the bond increases...They face difficulties and support each other despite the rivalries and differences between them. Their lives change in dramatic directions. The author beautifully chronicles the growth of the women and their relationship, even as she teases us by leaving clues that, at some point, everything will change dramatically and unexpectedly.
This story, beautifully wrought with great descriptions that bring the reader right into each moment, spotlights clearly the emotional life of each woman through the alternate use of the first person narrative. It is almost as if we can see inside each woman's soul.
I enjoyed Julia Glass's novels
Three Junes and
The Whole World Over, but this story topped them both, in my opinion.
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