Surprise Me

April 25, 2016
Goldstone traces a decades-long friendship and mentorship in this debut novel. College student and aspiring novelist Isabelle Rothman chooses Daniel Jablonski as the advisor for her senior year independent study project. She greatly admires Daniel’s early novels, but she finds out that the reclusive, unpredictable novelist is suffering from both writer’s block and agoraphobia, not to mention deeply damaged relationships with both of his adult children. It turns out, however, that mentoring Isabelle might be just the thing to help Daniel begin to overcome his personal fears, just as he inspires Isabelle to become a more fearless writer. Over the next 20 years, Isabelle and Daniel intermittently turn to one another through episodes of personal crisis and professional frustrations. Those who enjoy the more measured pace and tighter focus on the writers’ craft in the novel’s first part (not to mention the slow-burning growth of Isabelle and Daniel’s relationship) may grow restless at later sections’ temporal leaps, awkward shifts in perspective, and movement away from an explicit “portrait of the artist” narrative. In particular, the denouement, which takes place after a forward jump of 14 years, just glosses over events that could have been the real payoff for the situation developed in the novel’s early pages. Although Goldstone nominally tells both Isabelle and Daniel’s stories, Daniel’s later-in-life reinvention of self forms the far more compelling narrative arc. Agent: Marly Rusoff, Marly Rusoff Literary Agency.

April 15, 2016
The relationship between an aspiring writer and her mentor, tracked over two decades. It's spring semester 1994, and Isabelle Rothman is a senior at Chandler College in Los Angeles. She signs up for a writing tutorial with visiting professor Daniel Jablonski, a novelist whose early literary success has dwindled to nothing, leaving him blocked, depressed, and agoraphobic. He's known on campus as a difficult, unresponsive man, but Isabelle elicits a far livelier reaction from him. The first part of Goldstone's (Tell Me One Thing, 2014) debut novel focuses on the development of their mutually inspiring relationship and of Isabelle's novel, which is about a "girl who commits crimes"--a girl quite different than her self-effacing creator. After graduation (and an abbreviated but creepy make-out session), Daniel and Isabelle are parted for many years, continuing their relationship sporadically by email. She goes home to Long Island and her unpleasant family, then back to California, where a passionate interlude with a blond soccer player changes her life permanently. Daniel, who has a troubled, unfriendly family of his own, bounces from LA to Colorado, then to Iowa City, then is grudgingly taken in by his alienated daughter in New Hampshire. The obscure little town she lives in agrees with him; finally able to overcome his agoraphobia and his writer's block, he publishes a novel based on his relationship with Isabelle. However, what he sees as a loving tribute strikes her as literary larceny, and she races across the country to tell him off. Since this encounter resolves the central conflict of the novel, it's surprising to see there's still a big chunk of pages left. This final section jumps ahead to 2014, introducing new characters and situations it's hard to maintain interest in. Fritters away its initial momentum with a rambling, slack storyline.

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June 1, 2016
Goldstone (Tell Me One Thing, 2014) covers the 20-year friendship and correspondence between a teacher and a student in her first novel. As they meet on a northern California college campus, the settingsGoldstone describes initially symbolize the ways curmudgeonly, seemingly washed-up fiction writer Daniel and naive, apprehensive student Isabelle are both trapped. Daniel is an agoraphobic with failed marriages and two resentful grown children, Isabelle is bound by her parents' judgments and expectations. At first, Daniel is unimpressed with Isabelle's writing, but his challenges and her hard work to meet them eventually reveal her talent and reignite his own creativity. A gap in backgrounds, ages, and personalities makes the two unlikely friends, let alone lovers. But through writing they find a common language and intuitive, mutual understanding. Surprise Me is a realistic story of the astonishing ways two people can forever make an imprint on each other's lives.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)