The Glass Ocean

Starred review from June 3, 2013
Baker’s first novel (after two story collections, including Crash and Tell) conjures the strange Victorian world, both lush and barren, of 18-year-old orphan Carlotta Dell’Oro. Over six feet tall, fiery-haired, and filled with longing for the parents who were distant and full of mystery even when alive, Carlotta imagines the story of their lives and her own existence. Two decades before, when young Leo Dell’Oro sails as ship’s artist with acclaimed naturalist Felix Girard on his expedition to the New World, Felix’s gorgeous, clever daughter, Clotilde, teases the awkward Leo and captures his heart. When Felix disappears in a small boat, Clotilde goes with Leo to England, where she pines for her father, convinced he is alive, and where Leo becomes fascinated with glassmaking. Meanwhile, his new master, Thomas Argument, visits Clotilde daily, offering precious gifts and adoration that Leo can’t express. Thomas drops Clotilde, however, when it becomes clear that she’s pregnant, and Leo switches allegiances, joining Argument’s competitor. Carlotta imagines her own development as “a battle between my mother and me,” and feels sympathy for her mother having to give birth to a “cruel-eyed monster” such as Carlotta. When Carlotta arrives, she hovers in the corners of her parents’ attention, forgotten among the poorly preserved creatures in Felix’s dusty collection, until her parents’ obsessions soon draw them away, leaving her behind. Baker’s unforgettable tale is rich with nuance, buried passions, and Victorian oddities, offering passage into an extraordinary world. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency.

June 15, 2013
Baker's ambitious debut novel features a Victorian setting, mismatched lovers, dysfunctional families, doomed journeys of discovery, and the art and manufacture of glass. Our narrator and protagonist is Carlotta Dell'oro, a too-tall redhead, a ginger, only daughter of eccentric parents Leopold and Clotilde. The novel concentrates on their story, how they meet in the rooms of Felix Girard, eccentric explorer and collector, father of Clotilde. Leo falls for her, it seems, on sight, but he is diffident; obtuse but obsessive. Leo joins a cast of caricatures aboard the Narcissus for a journey to the Yucatan to study and collect specimens. This is Girard's journey, and Clotilde comes along. She concertizes on a spinet in her room, the men in her orbit, planets around a vain, blonde sun. Much happens. Clotilde and Leo find themselves together, back in dank, cold Whitby, England, married. At a loose end, low on funds, unable to relate to his narcissistic wife, Leo becomes an apprentice in the glasswork of Thomas Argument. The marriage a failure, the angular Argument becomes the hypotenuse in the Dell'oro love triangle. Leo immerses himself in the intricacies of re-creating ephemeral ocean creatures in glass. There are dazzling passages, and the concrete details of glass manufacture reign in the mannered prose. Is it the setting? Or the fact that every character shades into caricature, even the narrator? The prose often goes over the top and stays there. Baker has gone all-in to capture Carlotta's voice. This decision is admirable and risky. It is excessive, expressionistic. One will either love it or tire of it.

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Starred review from August 1, 2013
In this hauntingly beautiful debut set in the mid-ninteenth century in the coastal English town of Whitby, 16-year-old Carlotta Dell'oro recounts the lives of her ill-fated parents. A sensitive young artist, Leo Dell'oro meets the beautiful, cruel Clotilde Girard at her father's lodgings above an antiquities shop. A larger-than-life explorer, Felix Girard has commissioned Leo and several others to join him on an expedition to a distant island to document the remains of a prehistoric creature. At sea, Leo finds himself the object of Clotilde's ridicule, even as he starts to fill his pages with sketches of her. When the mission proves to be a sham and Felix goes missing, Clotilde is beside herself. She eventually marries Leo and settles, unhappily, with him in a rented house in Whitby. Leo takes a menial job working for a glassmaker who carries on an inappropriate friendship with Clotilde right under his nose. While Leo retreats into himself and his art, Clotilde hatches a plan of escape in order to find her beloved papa, only to be thwarted when she discovers, to her horror, that she's pregnant. Gorgeously written and elegantly evocative, Baker's prose brings the Dell'oros' world to life and drives home the tragedy of their fruitless longings.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2013

Set in the Victorian world but neither Dickensian nor steampunk, this debut novel by Bobst Literary Award winner Baker is narrated by red-haired, six-foot-plus Carlotta Dell'oro, who relates the story of her parents' lives. On an 1841 expedition aboard the Narcissus, during which he's expected to sketch sea creatures, Leonardo Dell'oro falls for remote, lovely Clotilde Girard, whose father funded the voyage. Leonardo brings Clotilde to remote Whitby, England, when her father goes missing, but they aren't the perfect couple. Eventually, Leonardo apprentices himself to a glassblower, learning to transform his sea sketches into fragile, fantastical forms. Love, art, and history; who can resist?

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