- There are two pivotal events in this fascinating story. Our novelist narrator, J.B. (Lucie) Blackwood, has been shortlisted for a major literary prize, and within days her husband of fourteen years dies under suspicious circumstances during a storm on a luxury cruise holiday to Japan.
- It's a celebration/tragedy clash, and of course the writer is torn and under massive emotional pressure.
- Bishop has given us an exquisitely structured novel. Her narrator reflects on deep issues that have characterised her life and career as a writer, blurring the line between fiction and memoir. We're immersed in a dissection of interiority, her thoughts and emotions central. The tiresome publicity tours, the insensitive interviewers on breakfast TV, a cruel New Yorker article, all happening while she is struggling to come to grips with her husband's death.
- While sometimes we're enmeshed in Lucie's interminable self-conscious meandering, we can't help being captured by her sparkling, invigorating writing and the depth of her insights. We're treated to deep reflections on films and their art, and how they differ from books. We're treated to a powerful critique of male dominance in fiction writing and reviewing, and the tired expectations in the industry and among the literati that define and imprison female authors. We're treated to the current debate about literature and its 'form' - 'Sometimes our allegiance to form might, simultaneously, be a dismissal of it, a refusal'. We're submerged in the reality of so-called creative collaboration. Patrick read every draft of her chapters, every addition or deletion. He demanded that. She was slow to realise she needed to be liberated.
- Until her marriage to Patrick, a celebrated film director/producer, she was a decidedly unhappy young woman. Her mother left her and her sister when they were young children, and today they’re still unclear why. There's never been any contact. She also fell out with her father, a renowned academic, years ago. He ‘despised’ her books. Despite her husband's wishes she has never wanted children. Families and children are a major theme in the book. Patrick's son from his previous marriage is an angry, moody, unpredictable teen and impossible to deal with. Her sister's eleven year old daughter is totally out of control. Their parents aren't spared however. Lucie makes that pretty clear. (There is a telling incident at a McDonald's when her sister adamantly refuses to buy a Jumbo pack for her daughter, despite the daughter being voraciously hungry after swimming practice, as eleven year olds are.)
- Pregnancy is a hot topic. ‘I wanted to avoid the disruptive presence of a child, only for that to be one of the things that ruined us in the end’, reflects Lucie. During the cruise Patrick had disclosed to her that his new girlfriend in LA is pregnant. Visiting her sister May and her family four weeks after Patrick’s death, she herself ironically tests positive after a pregnancy test.
- Bishop has accomplished something wonderful in this, her fourth novel. Page after page, passage after passage, requires re-reading. I loved it.
- Bishop has accomplished something wonderful in this, her fourth novel. Page after page, passage after passage, requires re-reading. I loved it.
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