Glass

July 11, 2011
Like a milder Good Morning, Midnight, Savage's new novel (after The Cry of the Sloth) is driven by the dithering narration of a woman adrift in the world. In this case, however, the compulsive recollections and endless qualifications of Edna, a failed writer and the elderly widow of a marginal writer, amount to little of interest. Prompted by a reissue of her husband's one successful work, but writing with no clear purpose, Edna drifts between minute explanations of her current circumstancesâthe position of her furniture; the state of her grapesâto often vibrant, outsized memories of her privileged but troubled childhood and her bohemian life with her late husband. Her repeated scorn for him and his forgettable Hemingwayesque "outdoor stories," reveals her most notable trait: snobbishness. (On the other hand, he referred to her efforts as "Edna's remembrance of everything past.") There is little to hold on to but a general sense of solitude and depression. It's only toward the end, as Edna unravels, that any sense of real psychology develops. Early promise of mysterious affairs or incarcerations amounts to nothing, and the lack of structure on several levels (no chapters, for one), though true to character, contributes to the enervating effect.

July 15, 2011
Edna reviews her life and relationships through free association and through the concatenation of objects that drift into her view.

Savage is not interested in the linear unfolding of the events in Edna's life but rather in the meanings that have accreted to them as she introspectively mulls them over and tries to make sense of things. She's been asked to write a preface to her late husband's out-of-print novel, so she sits at her typewriter reviewing her childhood and their life together. On many days, she makes no progress on the task of writing, but she does allow herself the freedom to dip into the richness of her memory. From the past we learn of the strained relationship between Edna's mother and father, the mother eventually running out on the family and remarrying. From the present we learn of Edna's devotion to typewriters and the difficulties of finding a suitable ribbon, of the antipathy she has for taking care of her neighbor's pet rat, of her reminiscences of travels with her ambitious pharmacist-turned-novelist husband Clarence. While Edna sees herself primarily as a "typist," she's actually a writer-manqué who tends to see life in literary and pictorial ways. About Brodt, one of her co-workers, for example, she opines that he "was not a communicative person; 'a phlegmatic and awkward taciturn man' is how I might begin to describe him, were I writing a story." Of course, the irony is that Edna is writing a story, and she finds herself at the still point of this turning world.

An engaging study of both the quirks and the depths of personality.

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Starred review from June 15, 2011

Introspection is at the heart of this new novel from Savage (Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife), which effectively defines that jewel of a word, velleity (the lowest level of compulsion to act, a slight impulse to do something). Edna lives alone, typing away on a preface to the reissue of her late husband's out-of-print novel. Though she can barely take care of herself, she inherits responsibility for plants, fish, and a rat, which sets the stage for a touching but often hilarious interplay between her interior life and the outside world. Edna's life story is revealed gradually, interwoven with information about her daily experience and the scattered workings of her mind. As we enter into the bright river of her thought, we experience Edna's compulsions to act (or not) and learn about her husband, her fears, and her childhood memories. VERDICT Reading like an intersection between Samuel R. Delany's The Motion of Light in Water and Marlen Haushofer's The Wall in its take on the overriding truth of memory and the heroic task of solitude, this is an original and compelling book. Highly recommended.--Henry Bankhead, Los Gatos P.L., CA

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