August 4, 2008
Signature
Reviewed by
Lydia Millet
The fictional palate of Julia Glass, bestselling author of 2002’s Three Junes
, is one of dog-breeding women and foxhunts, tony Manhattan galleries and boutiques, European travel and haute-cuisine chefs. In common with Rebecca Wells’s Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
franchise, Glass’s third novel, I See You Everywhere
, has female bonding among the landed gentry, a focus on relationships, and devil-may-care, enigmatically charming women of great romantic allure.
Like Three Junes
, the novel is a series of vignettes across the years, in this instance from the points of view of two sisters with different personalities. Louisa, the elder, is the steady sister on the lookout for love, while Clem is the younger sister, an adventuring, restless spirit with an unfortunate habit of chewing men up and spitting them out. Their parents, too, resemble those in Three Junes
: the mother is obsessed with raising and training expensive dogs on a country estate (this time in Rhode Island instead of Scotland); their father is a good-natured, kindly soul who plays second fiddle to a powerful wife. Louisa, not unlike Glass herself, is an urban woman who inhabits the New York art world and moves from making art (pottery) to writing; Clem, being a wilder sort, has a passion for wild animals and moves around the remoter reaches of the continent as an itinerant biologist to do contract work with charismatic fauna ranging from seals to grizzly bears. It’s not entirely clear how the sisters relate to each other’s livelihoods; Clem seems largely uninterested in art, whereas Louisa alternates between lavishly praising her sister’s work to save animals as heroic and referring to polar bears, in 2005, as “like Al Gore... suddenly all the alarmist rage.”
City and country mouse have a wary, competitive, sometimes antagonistic relationship grounded in affection; they occasionally steal each other’s boyfriends, but are usually there for each other in times of need, up to and including possible drowning, maiming and cancer. Both cook well, though Louisa is the true gourmet. Clem is better in the sack, at least if we take her word for it: as she says in a letter—reminding us, perhaps inadvertently, of the piña colada song—what she likes most in life are laughter, sex, champagne and sunsets. The sisters do have music in common: though both white, they listen almost exclusively to music by black performers, from Billie Holiday to Bob Marley.
I See You Everywhere
has a bourgeois, chick lit sensibility, minus the proud vacuousness of the Bushnell set and plus a somewhat unexpected, sad vanishing act by one of the protagonists. It should prove an engaging and intelligent, though not literary, page-turner for sisters who like to revel in sisterhood.
Lydia Millet’s most recent novel is
How the Dead Dream
(Counterpoint).
October 13, 2008
Glass's tale of two sisters, one who wants nothing but the best in life, the other who lives on the edge, is a refreshing look at the bonds of sisterhood. Connected no matter how great the distance between them, the sisters' relationship is analyzed in dramatic detail. Mary Stuart Masterson offers a compelling reading, at once genuine and theatrical. She reads as if she were giving an intimate soliloquy, yet sounds as if she were relating events from her own life. Glass reads the less showy role of the good sister and that, combined with Masterson working at the top of her game, produces fewer sparks in this honest and candid look at the human condition. A Pantheon hardcover (Reviews, Aug. 4).
January 15, 2009
National Book Award® winner Glass (Three Junes) tells here of sisters Clem and Louisa, whose differing interpretations of each others' lives, loves, and losses are masterfully conveyed through the narration, voiced alternately by the author and actress Mary Stuart Masterson. These two accomplished readers make the sisters' varying experiences and memories sound like a conversation at the kitchen table. Recommended for public and academic libraries. [Audio clips available through library.booksontape.comLJ 8/08.Ed.]Beth Traylor, Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libs.
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