Simone in Pieces

by Janet Burroway

Readers first meet Simone Lerrante, a Belgian war orphan, as a child refugee in Sussex, England, her memory damaged by trauma. This novel offers a kaleidoscopic vision of her fractured life and piecemeal understanding of self across multiple points of view. Following her from Cambridge to New York City and across the United States—through a disastrous marriage, thwarted desire, and the purgatory of academic backwaters—the novel charts Simone’s unexpected reconnection with her past, which provides both autonomy and inspiration for her future. Janet Burroway slowly reveals a multifaceted, fascinating protagonist, who observes her own life without always allowing herself to be immersed in it. Spanning seven decades, this story is both epic and contained, rewarding readers at every turn.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction

256 pages, Paperback

Published November 4, 2025

About the author

Janet Burroway is the author of seven novels including The Buzzards, Raw Silk (runner up for the national Book award), Opening Nights, and Cutting Stone; a volume of poetry, Material Goods; a collection of essays, Embalming Mom; and two children's books, The Truck on the Track and The Giant Jam Sandwich. Her most recent plays, Medea With Child, Sweepstakes, Division of Property, and Parts of Speech, have received readings and productions in New York, London, San Francisco, Hollywood, and various regional theatres. Her Writing Fiction is the most widely used creative writing text in America, and a multi-genre textbook, Imaginative Writing, appeared in 2002. A B.A. from Barnard College and M.A. from Cambridge University, England, she was Yale School of Drama RCA-NBC Fellow 1960-61, and is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor Emerita at the Florida State University in Tallahassee.

Reviews

[Ashley Posthuma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Janet Burroway is truly a master of her craft. This story was so well-told in a unique way, with great pacing and a satisfying end.

[Allyson Preble · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a tough book to read, not because of the content (though some of the content is pretty dark as well) but the way the book is constructed can be hard to follow at some points. We have the main character, Simone, but we rarely see the world through her POV. Rather, each chapter is from POV of some random outside character and their brief interaction with Simone. Some of the characters play a bigger role in Simone's life than others. It's an interesting technique but a difficult one to pull off, in my opinion. It's hard to connect to Simone when we rarely can see into her own head and we're always viewing her from outside biases. Towards the middle/end of the book some characters repeat or the circle of new characters slowly close so we're now viewing her from one family rather than a larger pool of characters, and this made the ending flow much more smoothly for me. The ending was the most captivating part of the book and the part which was the strongest.

The book does deal with some tough topics: rape, parent death, war refugees, drinking, child death, and abuse, to name a few, and Janet Burroway does an incredible job handling these topics with care, but again we view them from an outside perspective which leaves us feeling detached from the tough emotions. That being said, I had a tough time getting into this book but it's worth sticking with it. The ending is strong and 100% makes up for the weaker beginning. Janet Burroway is clearly an outstanding writer and she took a big swing with the format off the book. It tooks a bit for the book to find it's footing but once we're there we take off running.

[Michael Doane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simone in Pieces is a subtle, intelligent, and deeply affecting novel that explores how trauma fractures identity and how a life can still be shaped, reclaimed, and understood over time. Janet Burroway crafts a kaleidoscopic portrait of Simone Lerrante, a woman whose story unfolds in fragments that slowly, powerfully cohere.

First encountered as a Belgian war orphan in England, Simone carries the psychic residue of early trauma throughout her life. Her damaged memory and emotional detachment are not treated as deficits but as survival mechanisms, shaping how she observes her own experiences without fully inhabiting them. This distance gives the novel its distinctive tone: reflective, restrained, and quietly piercing.

As Simone moves from Cambridge to New York City and across the United States, Burroway traces a life marked by intellectual ambition, thwarted desire, and unsatisfying relationships. The novel resists melodrama, instead allowing meaning to emerge through accumulation through small moments, shifting perspectives, and the slow revelation of Simone’s interior life. Multiple points of view add texture and depth, emphasizing how identity is both self-constructed and externally perceived.

What makes Simone in Pieces especially compelling is its temporal scope. Spanning seven decades, the novel balances the epic and the intimate, showing how the past continues to echo long after its origins are forgotten or suppressed. Simone’s eventual reconnection with her history does not offer easy closure, but it provides something more honest: autonomy, clarity, and the possibility of renewal.

Burroway’s prose is precise and compassionate, attentive to the complexities of memory, agency, and self-knowledge. Simone in Pieces rewards patient readers with a portrait of a woman coming into focus over time never fully whole, but profoundly real.

[Mary Hawley · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best novels I've read this year! Simone in Pieces by Janet Burroway begins in 1964, with an older woman's recollection of a dangerous 1940 voyage across the Channel to rescue refugees from Belgium, and the nine- or ten-year old girl who comes alone to the boat. "My father arrives not," she says. That young girl is Simone, and the rest of the novel tells her story "in pieces," in fragments that stand alone as short stories, some from Simone's point of view and some from the perspective of those who encounter her. Simone grows up in England, earns a Fulbright to continue her studies in the US, marries, keeps moving. Her memories of her life in Belgium are fragmented and mysterious. As she deals with the repercussions of the early tragedy that separated her from her parents, the reader is carried along on Simone's multi-layered journey over seven decades. The writing is exquisite. I couldn't put it down.

[Robyn Allers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Janet Burroway's new novel, Simone in Pieces, is brilliant—in structure, writing, characters, story–the whole shebang. It follows Simone Lerrante, a Belgian war orphan-refugee, whose early memories are damaged by trauma. Across multiple countries, over six decades and through multiple points of view, we see how Simone is shaped by--and shapes--the people she encounters as she struggles to piece together her fractured memory of her past and discover her self. Each point of view is a brilliant gem of a story on its own. The writing is gorgeous, characters and observations spot-on. Eventually, we reach a crucial moment and turn to Simone's point of view. The concluding chapters are richly satisfying in their honesty, heartbreak and hopefulness.

[G.P. Gottlieb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simone is 9 years old when she finds herself alone on a trawler, escaping from Belgium to England, her father shot by Nazis. The trauma destroys her memory, and she cannot fill in the blanks of her early years. Told from different perspectives and angles, Simone in Pieces is a stunning historical novel that spans the life of a woman traumatized by war who navigates life as a refugee, a student, a wife, an academic, and finally, someone capable of love. https://newbooksnetwork.com/simone-in...

[Jan Norris · Rating 4 out of 5]

So well written!

[Kidlitter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good, thoughtful and in turn stimulating. Not the cheeriest read but a span of a life well taken.