The Ballad of Big Feeling

May 1, 2020
Watching an elderly parent become frail and ill is never easy, but it's even more difficult when the relationship is fraught. The unnamed 33-year-old narrator of this unsettling debut not only has to help her once-neglectful and often haughty mom sell her house and downsize, she also has to deal with her mother's physical decline. The two live thousands of miles apart, in two dissimilar but never-identified locales. The woman lives with her male partner in a cozy rental and both work in never-defined jobs that allow them a modicum of social mobility. The novel presents their relationship as comfortable, settled, and their day-to-day interactions unfold alongside the woman's planned and random encounters with people known only as "the neighbor," an elderly woman dying of kidney disease; "the cousin"; "the hard stranger"; "the father" and "the stepmother"; "the coworker"; "the pretty-necked friend"; and "the bad-lucked friend." Who she is with each of these people varies, but self-doubt is never far from the surface. Her weight, always a source of discomfort, is a constant concern, but readers have no idea if the narrator is actually overweight or if this fixation is a delusion. Whatever, it creates tension, and it is only after the woman and her mother have readied the family home for sale that eating cupcakes together becomes a rite of release. Class and religious differences are alluded to, as well, since the father is Jewish and the mother is not, but the many possible meanings of these identifiers are left hanging. In the end, it is up to the reader to parse meaning from each and every incident, many of them bizarre and some of them shocking. An original, compelling, and enigmatic first novel.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

June 1, 2020
An unnamed woman grapples with growing older, settling down, and caring for her dying mother in Braverman's quiet debut. At first glance, the woman's life seems quite lovely; she lives in a small but pretty house with her lover, works a steady job, visits with friends. But the house is a rental, her relationship and job have become workmanlike, and she can't even tell her friends that her mother, 2,000 miles away in another nameless town, is dying. Plus, she consistently worries about her looks, specifically her weight and her increasingly sagging breasts. Flashbacks let readers know that the woman has always had a fraught relationship with her mother and her body. There are no big reveals or crescendos of action; instead, there is the woman's day-to-day, peppered with small upheavals, like tending to an ailing neighbor in a way more intimate than their previous relationship suggested. Braverman's poetic, spare writing is perfect for the story, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions and feel their own feelings, especially in all the things left unsaid.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)