Kathleen Alcott’s debut novel The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets unravels our conception of family and explores the foundations we use to build an idea called home. Alcott eloquently muses on the distinction between a family based on shared history and bloodlines on the one hand, and one that is based on shared memories and physical proximity on the other. The difference between the two becomes painfully clear to the story’s protagonist, Ida, as she gets older, as does the knowledge that a shared past isn’t prescriptive of a joined future. The novel is part pean, part requiem for the memories of the relationships that follow us throughout our lives, haunting us some of the time while coddling us at others; and the narrative reminds us that a yearning for home is ultimately just a way to come to terms with who we are.
Posts Tagged ‘Fiction’
The Fallback Plan
A review of The Fallback Plan by Leigh Stein
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Once in a while, a book comes along that punctures the romanticism of childhood in a cruel yet necessary way. The Fallback Plan is not that book. Leigh Stein’s debut novel envelops all that postgraduates fear: their parents, their future, and themselves. Stein’s laughably gratifying account of coming home again breeds both familiarity and embarrassment. The story, set in a cicada shell-littered suburb of Anywhere, America rehashes the boredom and subsequent anxiety that befalls the young and unemployed. Written with contagious wit, Fallback brings light and humor to a circumstance so often considered dim. The pressing possibility of not so much living at home, but dying a slow, QVC-fueled death on your parents’ futon, fuels the book’s hilarity. Continue reading "The Fallback Plan"…