Starred review from July 29, 2024
The scintillating and unclassifiable latest from Gladman (Houses of Ravicka) takes the form of an interview with a writer named Renee Gladman about her attempt to write a lesbian romance. The conversation, which takes place over several years with an unnamed artist, includes reflections on the lesbian romance genre, of which Gladman considers herself a “scholar” after reading hundreds of them (“I learned how much people who are not writing experimental novels have their characters eat pizza and watch TV. It was like getting a tour through a kind of living that had eluded me before”). Interspersed with the dialogue are excerpts from Renee’s lesbian romance in progress, which stars a New York City architect named June who becomes reacquainted with a woman named Thena and can’t remember what happened between them in the past. Taken together, the conversations and the novel in progress reflect Renee’s desire to both fulfill and subvert expectations of the romance genre. Readers of Gladman’s previous work will recognize her brilliant thinking and penchant for challenging experiments, though this is her most accessible book yet. She sketches a stimulating portrait of a writer and her process while provoking readers to look closely at works of literature and identify the “book within a book within a third book that’s practically invisible.” It’s a knockout.
August 1, 2024
An experimental novel about writing a conventional novel. "How will you start the novel you wish to write?" This is the opening sentence of a novel Gladman has, in fact, already written. The person who answers this question is Renee--designated by the initial "R" throughout the book--who might be the author of this novel, might be a character with the same name as the author, or might be both. R is in conversation with I. As R and her interlocuter continue to discuss R's new novel, R refers to Gladman's earlier works of fiction, which are also R's earlier works of fiction. R explains that she's working on a romance novel--more specifically, a lesbian romance novel. By now it should be clear that this is not a novel in any conventional sense of the word. The novel that R is writing as this interview stretches out over a period of years ultimately sheds many of the tropes associated with romance novels. R describes having to think about plot--something that has never interested her as a writer before--but readers looking for plot will be disappointed. What they will find instead is reflections on writing and reading. Gladman's exploration of lesbians in fiction both popular and "literary" is interesting, as are her descriptions of how she works. As the text progresses, it becomes increasingly self-referential. R insists that she and the protagonist of her lesbian novel are different people, but she has to say this because it seems like maybe they are. By the time R explains that she doesn't like to abandon a novel because then she has to write a novel about not being able to finish that novel--something Gladman already did inTo After That (2008)--readers may be experiencing a sense of vertigo. Playful, insightful, and potentially exasperating.
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