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Prairie Oyster
'Sophie out-jars The Bell Jar with this dark and gleaming masterpiece' EILEEN MYLES
Everything falls into she will get sober, she will eat well, she will start sleeping properly, she will work hard, she will resurrect her career, she will make The Lakes, she will charm Mitch, she will be somebody
Pearl is a thirty-something filmmaker balanced precariously on the edge of an addiction-fueled breakdown. But when she is invited to interview her idol and crush, lesbian cult filmmaker Mitch Meyer, her stilted life restarts.
Buoyed and seduced by Mitch's interest in her and her work, Pearl swaps alcoholism for romantic obsession, and London for a summer in New York with Mitch. All the while she is haunted by a project she has been toying with for a film about Veronica Lake, a 1940s film star who drank herself into obscurity.
Everything falls into she will get sober, she will eat well, she will start sleeping properly, she will work hard, she will resurrect her career, she will make The Lakes, she will charm Mitch, she will be somebody
Pearl is a thirty-something filmmaker balanced precariously on the edge of an addiction-fueled breakdown. But when she is invited to interview her idol and crush, lesbian cult filmmaker Mitch Meyer, her stilted life restarts.
Buoyed and seduced by Mitch's interest in her and her work, Pearl swaps alcoholism for romantic obsession, and London for a summer in New York with Mitch. All the while she is haunted by a project she has been toying with for a film about Veronica Lake, a 1940s film star who drank herself into obscurity.
208 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 26, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
August 16, 2026
3.5 stars
June 15, 2026
2.75 Lyrically written, this accurately captures how it feels to be in a one-sided relationship where the other person gives you just enough to feel minutely important, only then to be ignored—left on read. Later, at a chance meeting, they hold your hand. Such mixed signals. Such lack of care for your emotions. Between this and addiction problems, Pearl’s life definitely hits rock bottom. This story is well written, but it isn’t fun to read, and I did feel bored throughout. Thanks to NetGalley and University of Iowa Press for the chance to read it. Pub date in the US is Oct 6th.
March 15, 2026
4.75⭐️
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
This book is the literary equivalent of watching a very elegant person slowly drive their life into a wall - and somehow you cannot look away.
Prairie Oyster follows Pearl, a London-based filmmaker who is deeply, enthusiastically self-destructing. Alcoholism, obsession, depression, creative ambition, rinse, repeat. It’s bleak! It’s exhausting! It’s also weirdly compelling in a “this is painful but I must keep going” way. I was completely absorbed, deeply uncomfortable, and emotionally drained - which honestly feels correct for a novel about addiction that refuses to flinch.
What this book does exceptionally well is capture the internal logic of addiction. The looping thoughts, the self-justifications, the tiny lies you tell yourself so you can keep going exactly as you are. At times I was physically cringing because the thought patterns felt so real. There’s no glamour here, no neat redemption arc - just the slow, grinding mess of someone who is very unwell and very aware of it.
Structurally, I loved it. Pearl’s fixation on a hard-drinking 1940s Hollywood star - woven through the book via documentary fragments and interview material - is genuinely clever. You can feel how she both idolises and consumes this woman’s myth, using it to make sense of (and excuse) her own spiral. It’s a powerful mirror, even if the rationale for that obsession sometimes felt a bit thin. Still, the way the form mirrors the obsession? Chef’s kiss.
The prose is controlled, hypnotic, and keeps you reading even when everything happening on the page is miserable. And Pearl herself is interesting because the book allows you to feel everything about her: sympathy, frustration, distance, tenderness, exhaustion. I can totally see readers reacting very differently to her - and I think that’s part of the point.
Is this doing something wildly new? Not necessarily. But the execution is strong, confident, and emotionally immersive, which counts for a lot. If you like dark, character-driven literary fiction - especially if The Bell Jar lives rent-free in your head - this will probably work for you.
Would I recommend it? Yes. Would I emotionally recover immediately after? Absolutely not.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy.
Prairie Oyster follows Pearl, a London-based filmmaker who is deeply, enthusiastically self-destructing. Alcoholism, obsession, depression, creative ambition, rinse, repeat. It’s bleak! It’s exhausting! It’s also weirdly compelling in a “this is painful but I must keep going” way. I was completely absorbed, deeply uncomfortable, and emotionally drained - which honestly feels correct for a novel about addiction that refuses to flinch.
What this book does exceptionally well is capture the internal logic of addiction. The looping thoughts, the self-justifications, the tiny lies you tell yourself so you can keep going exactly as you are. At times I was physically cringing because the thought patterns felt so real. There’s no glamour here, no neat redemption arc - just the slow, grinding mess of someone who is very unwell and very aware of it.
Structurally, I loved it. Pearl’s fixation on a hard-drinking 1940s Hollywood star - woven through the book via documentary fragments and interview material - is genuinely clever. You can feel how she both idolises and consumes this woman’s myth, using it to make sense of (and excuse) her own spiral. It’s a powerful mirror, even if the rationale for that obsession sometimes felt a bit thin. Still, the way the form mirrors the obsession? Chef’s kiss.
The prose is controlled, hypnotic, and keeps you reading even when everything happening on the page is miserable. And Pearl herself is interesting because the book allows you to feel everything about her: sympathy, frustration, distance, tenderness, exhaustion. I can totally see readers reacting very differently to her - and I think that’s part of the point.
Is this doing something wildly new? Not necessarily. But the execution is strong, confident, and emotionally immersive, which counts for a lot. If you like dark, character-driven literary fiction - especially if The Bell Jar lives rent-free in your head - this will probably work for you.
Would I recommend it? Yes. Would I emotionally recover immediately after? Absolutely not.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy.
January 8, 2026
Prairie Oyster is intense, messy, and gripping. It doesn’t try to tidy up addiction or make Pearl easier to root for. She makes bad choices, pushes people away, and spirals in ways that are often frustrating to watch, but the writing keeps you close to her experience, making it hard to disengage.
The novel plays with obsession, idolisation, and the thin line between creative drive and self-destruction. It won’t be a book for everyone, but if you’re drawn to character-led stories that are uncomfortable, emotionally raw, and a bit chaotic, this feels like a strong and assured debut.
The novel plays with obsession, idolisation, and the thin line between creative drive and self-destruction. It won’t be a book for everyone, but if you’re drawn to character-led stories that are uncomfortable, emotionally raw, and a bit chaotic, this feels like a strong and assured debut.
March 17, 2026
A compelling, vivid, well-crafted debut. I don’t think I’ve read anything like this before, for all its complex and human characterisation, its faithful account of queer desire alongside addictive behaviour - Prairie Oyster is a lyrical, clear, brilliant story.
I can struggle with novels, often losing stream a third of the way through, but this one I couldn’t put down, and finished in two days, sneaking time between work and sleep!
This is a superb novel, I wish I could read it for the first time again.
I can struggle with novels, often losing stream a third of the way through, but this one I couldn’t put down, and finished in two days, sneaking time between work and sleep!
This is a superb novel, I wish I could read it for the first time again.
November 10, 2025
This was absolutely incredible. Loved the narrator. The part where she texts 'fuck off' to someone trying to help her is so perfect. Love the Lana Turner monologues. Just an absolutely fantastic piece of work about sobriety, art, escape, and disappearing into the void vs trying to live life. Thank you Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.
November 30, 2025
devastating and incredibly stressful
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
One More Drink, One More Text, One More Beautifully Bad Idea
Sophie Robinson’s “Prairie Oyster” gives romantic obsession the rhythm of addiction, then lets its wayward filmmaker discover that a quieter life need not be a lesser one.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | August 13th, 2026
Pearl sets the camera running and walks toward the Icelandic fjord until she slips beyond its reach, turning the disappearance she once feared into an image she has chosen to make.
Desire keeps changing containers in Sophie Robinson’s “Prairie Oyster.” Alcohol first, then cocaine and pills, then the notice of an older artist, then sex, the hope of artistic resurrection, the dead glamour of Veronica Lake. Pearl, Robinson’s thirty-two-year-old filmmaker, has spent so long treating intensity as proof of life that sobriety presents an almost metaphysical nuisance: if the world is not lurching, glittering, collapsing, calling at midnight or withholding a reply, what is supposed to make it feel real? “Prairie Oyster” begins with what Pearl consumes. It becomes stranger, and better, when appetite stops naming a substance and starts describing a way of looking.
Early in the novel Pearl wakes on the floor after another blackout, her phone dead, vodka nearby, her academic job slipping beyond excuse. The room is crowded with the paperwork of use: stale beer, vomit, cigarettes, shaking hands, improvised lies, a nearly empty gas meter, the grim arithmetic of drugs and just-enough functionality. Robinson denies addiction the flattering mystery of the doomed artist. Pearl may once have been a promising experimental filmmaker, but catastrophe has become repetitive administration. She knows which story will buy time, which substance might level which symptom, which fresh start can be promised after one last drink. The comedy bites because dissolution has ceased to be dramatic even to the person dissolving.
In Pearl’s blackout aftermath, bottles, bills, screens and household obligations crowd the same small room, stripping addiction of doomed-artist glamour and revealing catastrophe as repetitive administration.
Mitch Meyer arrives when Pearl is desperate for a new plot. A cult lesbian filmmaker of an older generation, Mitch is Pearl’s idol, academic subject, crush and eventually lover, a person whose artistic authority carries the charge of queer history itself. When Mitch asks Pearl to interview them at a retrospective, listens without visible judgment to the wreckage of her life and urges her to try one sober day, Pearl begins going to meetings and rebuilding. For a while, Mitch’s attention warms Pearl’s bones in exactly the place alcohol used to reach. Robinson lets the resemblance gather without reducing one dependency to a metaphor for the other: anticipation, relief, the little rush of being chosen, the wish for one more dose.
Even so, “Prairie Oyster” is too alert to make Mitch a walking syringe. Their attraction is genuine; Mitch admires Pearl’s work; Pearl has not invented every tenderness. Nor has Mitch explicitly promised the future Pearl begins constructing from sex, messages, public affection and artistic encouragement. The murkier question is what responsibility survives when there has been no clean deception. Mitch can mean what they offer and still occupy far more room in Pearl’s imagination than they seem willing to acknowledge. Pearl starts rationing messages, reading silence as verdict, learning which version of herself might earn a reply. The phone becomes a pocket casino whose jackpot is somebody else’s attention.
At Mitch Meyer’s retrospective, professional recognition, public attention and private desire begin to share the same charge, making the pleasure of being selected feel dangerously close to another kind of dose.
The simplest account says Pearl swaps one addiction for another. That gets the mechanism right and the novel wrong by a few degrees. Mitch makes Pearl feel exceptional. Sinead, her AA friend, makes sandwiches, folds clothes, answers the phone and keeps being there. Björn, Mitch’s longtime producer, later tells Pearl that her films are tender, daring, juvenile in places, badly in need of a better editor, and worth continuing. That criticism matters as much as the praise. Björn can see Pearl clearly without needing her dependence in return. Robinson’s moral interest gathers around that difference: who looks at Pearl, what they see, and what their seeing asks her to surrender.
Robinson builds the same pressure into the prose. Her sentences often gather colors, textures, objects and sensations until syntax itself begins to crave. The opening catalogue of drinks does not explain alcoholism so much as perform its grammar: one more glass, one more setting, one more promise, one more gorgeous little exit from the self. Elsewhere, fragments interrupt long rushes of thought like jump cuts. Memory enters sideways. Broadcast cues, applause, dialogue and imagined television lighting interrupt the narrative without tidying it. Pearl edits life while living it, turning sensation into sequence before she has decided what any of it means.
If the style were merely lush, it would be much less interesting. Robinson is equally devoted to the clammy, sour, humiliating body. Pearl vomits, sweats, bleeds, shakes, snorts, pisses, sleeps badly and has sex in states that make transcendence look distinctly unhygienic. Film-school argument rubs against drug talk; sudden lyric beauty turns up beside cheap wine and bad breath. That range keeps the book from glamorizing collapse, but it also avoids the opposite falsification. Intoxication has to contain pleasure or Pearl’s return to it makes no sense. The thing ruining her keeps offering, briefly and convincingly, to rescue her from herself.
Pearl’s stalled third film, “The Lakes,” creates the novel’s riskiest complication. For years she has been obsessed with Veronica Lake, the Hollywood star whose beauty became an image, whose alcoholism became biography and whose later obscurity seems to Pearl almost cosmically unfair. Robinson threads an invented first-person interview with Lake through the novel, complete with stage directions, television cues and memories sliding between public record and imaginative reconstruction. Pearl keeps finding herself in Veronica, then finding Veronica in herself. The unease is concrete: Robinson is not simply writing about a dead actress but inventing her consciousness.
At first Pearl wants Veronica to prove something. If someone once so visible could disappear, then fame has failed its bargain. If Veronica drank herself toward oblivion, perhaps Pearl can understand her own collapse by tracing the pattern. Here “Prairie Oyster” comes near Catherine Lacey’s “Biography of X,” another book suspicious of the coherence imposed on artists after the fact. Robinson’s problem is sharper because Veronica Lake was real. Pearl risks treating a dead woman as usable material, and Robinson, by giving that woman an invented interior life, risks the same trespass one level above her.
Pearl’s project eventually becomes evidence against Pearl. She begins “The Lakes” as a story about how a person falls apart into a thousand pieces, but the imagined Veronica will not stay inside that arrangement. Fame was not salvation; obscurity was not pure erasure; the life between those poles refuses the clean shape Pearl wants from it. Pearl is not only the person being watched badly. She watches, frames, selects and turns another woman’s life into material that might explain her own. A filmmaker cannot avoid framing. She can, however, learn that the frame is not the life.
Pearl films Veronica Lake’s star as passing feet repeatedly hide and recover the name, turning public memory into a problem of who looks, what survives the frame and how another life becomes material.
Across England, New York, Los Angeles, New York again and finally Iceland, the five acts narrow and widen Pearl’s field of vision. Substances monopolize the early life. New York lets Mitch appear to organize the chaos. Los Angeles should enlarge Pearl’s world with research, producers, new friendships and possible work, yet nearly all of it becomes background noise to Mitch’s availability. Robinson’s sharpest structural trick is to starve competing plots. Interesting things happen to Pearl and she cannot invest in them. The loss is not simply that she wants Mitch too much; it is that everything else begins to look dramatically underexposed.
Distance does not cure this. In California, Pearl learns that Katja, another younger woman in Mitch’s orbit, once occupied a painfully similar position. Katja gives Pearl the sentence she has been resisting: what she kept thinking was the beginning may already have been the whole thing. Pearl understands the pattern and still cannot live according to the understanding. Like Leslie Jamison’s “The Recovering,” “Prairie Oyster” is interested in that humiliating delay between naming a pattern and being able to stop repeating it. Recognition can be instantaneous. A changed life is usually slower and considerably less photogenic.
In New York again, romance and sobriety finally collapse into the same relapse. Pearl sees Mitch with somebody else, drinks and uses with Katja, and slides toward another physical crisis. By then the relapse hurts precisely because it has ceased to be surprising: Robinson has spent pages teaching us the machinery that will produce it. What follows is quieter. Pearl attends a meeting with a hospital bracelet still on her wrist. A woman gives her crackers, applesauce and seltzer. Rescue shrinks to food, a chair and somebody staying. No one in the room needs Pearl to be fascinating.
Mitch, meanwhile, resists the moral tidiness Pearl sometimes wants from them and readers may want on her behalf. Pearl turns some absences into promises and some intimacies into futures. Yet Katja’s history makes the pattern harder to dismiss as Pearl’s private delusion, and Mitch’s age, reputation and cultural authority remain present even when nobody names them. Robinson does not hand down a verdict. More interestingly, she leaves a residue of responsibility that cannot be settled by saying Mitch never promised enough. One person has more power to set the terms; the other keeps discovering those terms after the fact.
One day sober and still wearing her hospital bracelet, Pearl sits beside a stranger who brings food and remains while everyone else looks skyward, giving care the quiet scale of somebody simply choosing not to leave.
Iceland is where the novel risks becoming too tasteful for its own good. Remote residency, fjords, oysters, sheep, cold water, sober routines: the ingredients could have curdled into artisanal redemption. Robinson mostly avoids that fate by keeping Pearl compromised. She is not purified by scenery. She remains evasive, uses some of Björn’s Ambien without telling Sinead, and knows that unread messages and unfinished consequences still wait beyond the horizon. Yet the prose begins to cool. Food, weather, animals, research and work reclaim descriptive space. The change is modest but decisive: Mitch is no longer the only thing in focus.
To recover, here, is to regain plurality. More than one person can matter. More than one task can claim the day. A feeling can be terrible without becoming the only fact in existence. Sober life is not revealed as secretly more thrilling than cocaine and sex; it is allowed to be less total. Björn’s unseduced attention matters because it can include disappointment. He can admire Pearl’s films, call them imperfect, tell her she needs a better editor and still make room for her to continue. Praise no longer has to arrive carrying a hook.
Repetition is both the novel’s formal intelligence and its clearest weakness. The Mitch cycle – contact, exhilaration, interpretation, silence, panic, strategic communication, renewed contact – is psychologically exact, but Robinson sometimes continues it after the reader has learned its pressure. The motifs crowd one another too. Water, mirrors, stars, pearls, oysters, screens and doubles accumulate until one suspects every object has arrived with a small seminar tucked inside it. The late appearance of a two-headed lamb is unforgettable, moving and so perfectly suited to a novel about divided selves that it nearly winks.
Once the lamb arrives, Robinson is close to overplaying her hand, then finds a way out. The malformed animal dies shortly after birth, its two heads seeming to face different directions in burial, one toward earth and one toward sky. Pearl, who has spent the novel manufacturing doubles of herself and others, is left with an image too literal to solve. Then morning comes. She makes coffee, dresses in black, styles herself in deliberate echo of Veronica, places a camera on a tripod beside the fjord, presses record and walks.
Pearl moves farther from the camera until she becomes a dot and then vanishes from the frame. Earlier disappearance meant blackout, abandonment, death, cultural forgetting, lost artistic relevance, the terror that nobody powerful enough was looking. Now disappearance is composition. Pearl is not the woman erased by the image; she is the filmmaker who decided where the image would end. Veronica, too, slips free of the use Pearl had planned for her. She no longer has to prove that fame fails or addiction wins. She can simply have had a life, disorder and all.
On a 100-point scale, I land at 88/100, which corresponds to 4/5 Goodreads stars. The missing points are mostly a matter of restraint: the middle can repeat its revelation, the motifs sometimes arrive in battalions, and supporting figures such as Sinead, Katja and Björn occasionally reveal their structural jobs too plainly. None of that is cosmetic. It makes parts of the book feel more arranged than lived. But the formal choices that matter most – the starving of competing plots, Veronica’s resistance to Pearl’s thesis, the cooling of attention in Iceland, the final camera – hold.
Ultimately, Robinson’s best idea is not that Pearl must stop wanting. Desire survives; so do art, attraction, grief, vanity, appetite and the wish to be seen. The change is smaller and harder: no single object of desire gets to become the whole weather system. In the final image, Pearl walks toward the water until the camera can no longer find her. For most of the novel she would have understood that vanishing as catastrophe. Now the camera keeps running, the fjord remains, and somewhere beyond the edge of visibility, so does she.
In-Process Section Header
All-Character Watercolor Study
[image error]
Composition, Scale and Contact Study
[image error]
Cover-Palette and Fjord-Wash Study
Border and Hand-Lettering Study
Walk-of-Fame Movement and Lettering Study
First Underdrawing Study
First-Wash Visualization
All watercolor illustrations by Demetris Papadimitropoulos.
Watercolors are done on 140lb vellum and then scanned into the computer using an Epson scanner. From there, they are finalized in Procreate. All art and opinions are my own.
Sophie Robinson’s “Prairie Oyster” gives romantic obsession the rhythm of addiction, then lets its wayward filmmaker discover that a quieter life need not be a lesser one.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | August 13th, 2026
Pearl sets the camera running and walks toward the Icelandic fjord until she slips beyond its reach, turning the disappearance she once feared into an image she has chosen to make.
Desire keeps changing containers in Sophie Robinson’s “Prairie Oyster.” Alcohol first, then cocaine and pills, then the notice of an older artist, then sex, the hope of artistic resurrection, the dead glamour of Veronica Lake. Pearl, Robinson’s thirty-two-year-old filmmaker, has spent so long treating intensity as proof of life that sobriety presents an almost metaphysical nuisance: if the world is not lurching, glittering, collapsing, calling at midnight or withholding a reply, what is supposed to make it feel real? “Prairie Oyster” begins with what Pearl consumes. It becomes stranger, and better, when appetite stops naming a substance and starts describing a way of looking.
Early in the novel Pearl wakes on the floor after another blackout, her phone dead, vodka nearby, her academic job slipping beyond excuse. The room is crowded with the paperwork of use: stale beer, vomit, cigarettes, shaking hands, improvised lies, a nearly empty gas meter, the grim arithmetic of drugs and just-enough functionality. Robinson denies addiction the flattering mystery of the doomed artist. Pearl may once have been a promising experimental filmmaker, but catastrophe has become repetitive administration. She knows which story will buy time, which substance might level which symptom, which fresh start can be promised after one last drink. The comedy bites because dissolution has ceased to be dramatic even to the person dissolving.
In Pearl’s blackout aftermath, bottles, bills, screens and household obligations crowd the same small room, stripping addiction of doomed-artist glamour and revealing catastrophe as repetitive administration.
Mitch Meyer arrives when Pearl is desperate for a new plot. A cult lesbian filmmaker of an older generation, Mitch is Pearl’s idol, academic subject, crush and eventually lover, a person whose artistic authority carries the charge of queer history itself. When Mitch asks Pearl to interview them at a retrospective, listens without visible judgment to the wreckage of her life and urges her to try one sober day, Pearl begins going to meetings and rebuilding. For a while, Mitch’s attention warms Pearl’s bones in exactly the place alcohol used to reach. Robinson lets the resemblance gather without reducing one dependency to a metaphor for the other: anticipation, relief, the little rush of being chosen, the wish for one more dose.
Even so, “Prairie Oyster” is too alert to make Mitch a walking syringe. Their attraction is genuine; Mitch admires Pearl’s work; Pearl has not invented every tenderness. Nor has Mitch explicitly promised the future Pearl begins constructing from sex, messages, public affection and artistic encouragement. The murkier question is what responsibility survives when there has been no clean deception. Mitch can mean what they offer and still occupy far more room in Pearl’s imagination than they seem willing to acknowledge. Pearl starts rationing messages, reading silence as verdict, learning which version of herself might earn a reply. The phone becomes a pocket casino whose jackpot is somebody else’s attention.
At Mitch Meyer’s retrospective, professional recognition, public attention and private desire begin to share the same charge, making the pleasure of being selected feel dangerously close to another kind of dose.
The simplest account says Pearl swaps one addiction for another. That gets the mechanism right and the novel wrong by a few degrees. Mitch makes Pearl feel exceptional. Sinead, her AA friend, makes sandwiches, folds clothes, answers the phone and keeps being there. Björn, Mitch’s longtime producer, later tells Pearl that her films are tender, daring, juvenile in places, badly in need of a better editor, and worth continuing. That criticism matters as much as the praise. Björn can see Pearl clearly without needing her dependence in return. Robinson’s moral interest gathers around that difference: who looks at Pearl, what they see, and what their seeing asks her to surrender.
Robinson builds the same pressure into the prose. Her sentences often gather colors, textures, objects and sensations until syntax itself begins to crave. The opening catalogue of drinks does not explain alcoholism so much as perform its grammar: one more glass, one more setting, one more promise, one more gorgeous little exit from the self. Elsewhere, fragments interrupt long rushes of thought like jump cuts. Memory enters sideways. Broadcast cues, applause, dialogue and imagined television lighting interrupt the narrative without tidying it. Pearl edits life while living it, turning sensation into sequence before she has decided what any of it means.
If the style were merely lush, it would be much less interesting. Robinson is equally devoted to the clammy, sour, humiliating body. Pearl vomits, sweats, bleeds, shakes, snorts, pisses, sleeps badly and has sex in states that make transcendence look distinctly unhygienic. Film-school argument rubs against drug talk; sudden lyric beauty turns up beside cheap wine and bad breath. That range keeps the book from glamorizing collapse, but it also avoids the opposite falsification. Intoxication has to contain pleasure or Pearl’s return to it makes no sense. The thing ruining her keeps offering, briefly and convincingly, to rescue her from herself.
Pearl’s stalled third film, “The Lakes,” creates the novel’s riskiest complication. For years she has been obsessed with Veronica Lake, the Hollywood star whose beauty became an image, whose alcoholism became biography and whose later obscurity seems to Pearl almost cosmically unfair. Robinson threads an invented first-person interview with Lake through the novel, complete with stage directions, television cues and memories sliding between public record and imaginative reconstruction. Pearl keeps finding herself in Veronica, then finding Veronica in herself. The unease is concrete: Robinson is not simply writing about a dead actress but inventing her consciousness.
At first Pearl wants Veronica to prove something. If someone once so visible could disappear, then fame has failed its bargain. If Veronica drank herself toward oblivion, perhaps Pearl can understand her own collapse by tracing the pattern. Here “Prairie Oyster” comes near Catherine Lacey’s “Biography of X,” another book suspicious of the coherence imposed on artists after the fact. Robinson’s problem is sharper because Veronica Lake was real. Pearl risks treating a dead woman as usable material, and Robinson, by giving that woman an invented interior life, risks the same trespass one level above her.
Pearl’s project eventually becomes evidence against Pearl. She begins “The Lakes” as a story about how a person falls apart into a thousand pieces, but the imagined Veronica will not stay inside that arrangement. Fame was not salvation; obscurity was not pure erasure; the life between those poles refuses the clean shape Pearl wants from it. Pearl is not only the person being watched badly. She watches, frames, selects and turns another woman’s life into material that might explain her own. A filmmaker cannot avoid framing. She can, however, learn that the frame is not the life.
Pearl films Veronica Lake’s star as passing feet repeatedly hide and recover the name, turning public memory into a problem of who looks, what survives the frame and how another life becomes material.
Across England, New York, Los Angeles, New York again and finally Iceland, the five acts narrow and widen Pearl’s field of vision. Substances monopolize the early life. New York lets Mitch appear to organize the chaos. Los Angeles should enlarge Pearl’s world with research, producers, new friendships and possible work, yet nearly all of it becomes background noise to Mitch’s availability. Robinson’s sharpest structural trick is to starve competing plots. Interesting things happen to Pearl and she cannot invest in them. The loss is not simply that she wants Mitch too much; it is that everything else begins to look dramatically underexposed.
Distance does not cure this. In California, Pearl learns that Katja, another younger woman in Mitch’s orbit, once occupied a painfully similar position. Katja gives Pearl the sentence she has been resisting: what she kept thinking was the beginning may already have been the whole thing. Pearl understands the pattern and still cannot live according to the understanding. Like Leslie Jamison’s “The Recovering,” “Prairie Oyster” is interested in that humiliating delay between naming a pattern and being able to stop repeating it. Recognition can be instantaneous. A changed life is usually slower and considerably less photogenic.
In New York again, romance and sobriety finally collapse into the same relapse. Pearl sees Mitch with somebody else, drinks and uses with Katja, and slides toward another physical crisis. By then the relapse hurts precisely because it has ceased to be surprising: Robinson has spent pages teaching us the machinery that will produce it. What follows is quieter. Pearl attends a meeting with a hospital bracelet still on her wrist. A woman gives her crackers, applesauce and seltzer. Rescue shrinks to food, a chair and somebody staying. No one in the room needs Pearl to be fascinating.
Mitch, meanwhile, resists the moral tidiness Pearl sometimes wants from them and readers may want on her behalf. Pearl turns some absences into promises and some intimacies into futures. Yet Katja’s history makes the pattern harder to dismiss as Pearl’s private delusion, and Mitch’s age, reputation and cultural authority remain present even when nobody names them. Robinson does not hand down a verdict. More interestingly, she leaves a residue of responsibility that cannot be settled by saying Mitch never promised enough. One person has more power to set the terms; the other keeps discovering those terms after the fact.
One day sober and still wearing her hospital bracelet, Pearl sits beside a stranger who brings food and remains while everyone else looks skyward, giving care the quiet scale of somebody simply choosing not to leave.
Iceland is where the novel risks becoming too tasteful for its own good. Remote residency, fjords, oysters, sheep, cold water, sober routines: the ingredients could have curdled into artisanal redemption. Robinson mostly avoids that fate by keeping Pearl compromised. She is not purified by scenery. She remains evasive, uses some of Björn’s Ambien without telling Sinead, and knows that unread messages and unfinished consequences still wait beyond the horizon. Yet the prose begins to cool. Food, weather, animals, research and work reclaim descriptive space. The change is modest but decisive: Mitch is no longer the only thing in focus.
To recover, here, is to regain plurality. More than one person can matter. More than one task can claim the day. A feeling can be terrible without becoming the only fact in existence. Sober life is not revealed as secretly more thrilling than cocaine and sex; it is allowed to be less total. Björn’s unseduced attention matters because it can include disappointment. He can admire Pearl’s films, call them imperfect, tell her she needs a better editor and still make room for her to continue. Praise no longer has to arrive carrying a hook.
Repetition is both the novel’s formal intelligence and its clearest weakness. The Mitch cycle – contact, exhilaration, interpretation, silence, panic, strategic communication, renewed contact – is psychologically exact, but Robinson sometimes continues it after the reader has learned its pressure. The motifs crowd one another too. Water, mirrors, stars, pearls, oysters, screens and doubles accumulate until one suspects every object has arrived with a small seminar tucked inside it. The late appearance of a two-headed lamb is unforgettable, moving and so perfectly suited to a novel about divided selves that it nearly winks.
Once the lamb arrives, Robinson is close to overplaying her hand, then finds a way out. The malformed animal dies shortly after birth, its two heads seeming to face different directions in burial, one toward earth and one toward sky. Pearl, who has spent the novel manufacturing doubles of herself and others, is left with an image too literal to solve. Then morning comes. She makes coffee, dresses in black, styles herself in deliberate echo of Veronica, places a camera on a tripod beside the fjord, presses record and walks.
Pearl moves farther from the camera until she becomes a dot and then vanishes from the frame. Earlier disappearance meant blackout, abandonment, death, cultural forgetting, lost artistic relevance, the terror that nobody powerful enough was looking. Now disappearance is composition. Pearl is not the woman erased by the image; she is the filmmaker who decided where the image would end. Veronica, too, slips free of the use Pearl had planned for her. She no longer has to prove that fame fails or addiction wins. She can simply have had a life, disorder and all.
On a 100-point scale, I land at 88/100, which corresponds to 4/5 Goodreads stars. The missing points are mostly a matter of restraint: the middle can repeat its revelation, the motifs sometimes arrive in battalions, and supporting figures such as Sinead, Katja and Björn occasionally reveal their structural jobs too plainly. None of that is cosmetic. It makes parts of the book feel more arranged than lived. But the formal choices that matter most – the starving of competing plots, Veronica’s resistance to Pearl’s thesis, the cooling of attention in Iceland, the final camera – hold.
Ultimately, Robinson’s best idea is not that Pearl must stop wanting. Desire survives; so do art, attraction, grief, vanity, appetite and the wish to be seen. The change is smaller and harder: no single object of desire gets to become the whole weather system. In the final image, Pearl walks toward the water until the camera can no longer find her. For most of the novel she would have understood that vanishing as catastrophe. Now the camera keeps running, the fjord remains, and somewhere beyond the edge of visibility, so does she.
In-Process Section Header
All-Character Watercolor Study
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Composition, Scale and Contact Study
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Cover-Palette and Fjord-Wash Study
Border and Hand-Lettering Study
Walk-of-Fame Movement and Lettering Study
First Underdrawing Study
First-Wash Visualization
All watercolor illustrations by Demetris Papadimitropoulos.
Watercolors are done on 140lb vellum and then scanned into the computer using an Epson scanner. From there, they are finalized in Procreate. All art and opinions are my own.
June 8, 2026
Prairie Oyster was an excruciatingly raw look at addiction and obsession. I looove books about lesbian obsession so this was right up my alley. This is at times a very difficult read, watching Pearl fall off the wagon again and again, but I never stopped rooting for her. I also loved the Veronica Lake interview woven throughout. This was a weird dreamy pearl of a novel that I gulped down in a single day.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Confessional poet Sophie Robinson’s debut novel builds on earlier poetry collection Rabbit. Like that, it’s a searing study in intimacy and vulnerability. As before, Robinson mines aspects of her past blending raw realism with a more avant-garde sensibility. Rabbit detailed Robinson’s struggles with addiction, the long drawn-out process of bottoming out, her brief recovery followed by falling further than ever anticipated before clawing her way back. Robinson’s semi-autobiographical story expands on earlier material. It centres on experimental film-maker Pearl whose early success with lesbian romance Candy Kisses has left her riddled with insecurities, particularly after her latest piece bombed. Robinson’s narrative mirrors Pearl’s idea for her next film. One which would compare and contrast Pearl’s life with faded Hollywood star Veronica Lake who died from alcohol poisoning.
In order to work on her project Pearl’s taken up a residency at a nondescript university in an equally nondescript town. But she spends her time mired in drugs and alcohol, barely managing to deliver the required teaching sessions. Then an unexpected grant allows her to contemplate a variation on a road movie. Pearl travels to America ostensibly to research into Veronica Lake but her energies are devoted to her pursuit of director Mitch Meyer. Twice Pearl’s age, Meyer’s renowned for their ground-breaking contributions to queer cinema. Meyer – who bears more than a passing resemblance to poet Eileen Myles – is someone Pearl’s met before but now Pearl’s passionate attachment to non-committal Meyer threatens to become all-consuming. And their desultory affair will take Pearl to perilous places.
Robinson moves between Pearl’s everyday and a surreal re-imagining of Lake’s last interview, her 1971 appearance on the popular Dick Cavett Show. Lake’s career had long since stalled but a bit part in an obscure horror movie and the release of her autobiography brought her renewed attention. Pearl and Lake allow Robinson to explore the creative process alongside reflections on fame and gender; mortality; power relations and queer desire. Like countless first novels, Robinson tries to pack too much in here, so it can feel slightly unbalanced at times. The pacing can be uneven and there are repetitive stretches. But, at its height, Robinson’s combination of visceral and lyrical is moving, arresting and immersive, clearly the work of an accomplished, innovative writer.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Fleet for an ARC
Rating: 3.5
In order to work on her project Pearl’s taken up a residency at a nondescript university in an equally nondescript town. But she spends her time mired in drugs and alcohol, barely managing to deliver the required teaching sessions. Then an unexpected grant allows her to contemplate a variation on a road movie. Pearl travels to America ostensibly to research into Veronica Lake but her energies are devoted to her pursuit of director Mitch Meyer. Twice Pearl’s age, Meyer’s renowned for their ground-breaking contributions to queer cinema. Meyer – who bears more than a passing resemblance to poet Eileen Myles – is someone Pearl’s met before but now Pearl’s passionate attachment to non-committal Meyer threatens to become all-consuming. And their desultory affair will take Pearl to perilous places.
Robinson moves between Pearl’s everyday and a surreal re-imagining of Lake’s last interview, her 1971 appearance on the popular Dick Cavett Show. Lake’s career had long since stalled but a bit part in an obscure horror movie and the release of her autobiography brought her renewed attention. Pearl and Lake allow Robinson to explore the creative process alongside reflections on fame and gender; mortality; power relations and queer desire. Like countless first novels, Robinson tries to pack too much in here, so it can feel slightly unbalanced at times. The pacing can be uneven and there are repetitive stretches. But, at its height, Robinson’s combination of visceral and lyrical is moving, arresting and immersive, clearly the work of an accomplished, innovative writer.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Fleet for an ARC
Rating: 3.5
October 29, 2025
Thank you to NetGalley and Little Brown for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for a review.
What a ride!
Prairie Oyster follows Pearl, a thirty-something filmmaker who is juggling staying sober with writing a screenplay about Veronica Lake, a forgotten starlet who once defined Hollywood noir. Somewhere along the way she meets Mitch, a cult lesbian filmmaker whom she idolises, and falls hard and fast for them. She follows them to America, hoping to win their heart and to finish the script—but the path to recovery is not linear, as Pearl soon discovers, and the lines between herself and Veronica begin to blur.
This novel alarmed me. At first, I wasn’t sure I could get on its level. The narrative is intense, fast-paced and, crucially, messy—but I don’t mean any of these things in a bad way. As I settled in, I realised how necessary they were. I bemoaned Pearl’s bad decisions only because they felt so real; it terrified me how much I related to her. I know how easy it is to do the exact opposite of what is good for you, when it feels like all you know. Robinson has an urgent way of writing that pulled me in and didn’t let go.
I felt the novel did well to represent the nuances of the parasocial relationship, whether that was with Mitch or Veronica Lake. We also feel Pearl’s dread in the blackouts, and catch flashes of her trauma, beginning to piece the cycle of addiction together. There is a third person narrative voice, but we remain entirely in Pearl’s head—I would maybe have preferred first person to make her unreliability clearer, but it still works. Other parts that didn’t quite rhyme also could have been my fault over Robinson’s—there were some characters that I didn’t like or found underdeveloped, and I don’t really like dropping quotation marks, as a rule, but these were minor beside the majority of the narrative, which I did really enjoy.
I liked how Pearl’s storyline flowed directly into the screenplay: it was especially impressive how smooth these transitions were, sometimes occurring mid-paragraph. Although fleeting, Veronica’s voice was distinct from Pearl’s, and I was charmed by her movie-inflected speech. My only qualm was that I would’ve liked a little more indication of what the film looked like visually.
Ultimately, Prairie Oyster is a compelling novel that marks a strong debut for Robinson in prose.
What a ride!
Prairie Oyster follows Pearl, a thirty-something filmmaker who is juggling staying sober with writing a screenplay about Veronica Lake, a forgotten starlet who once defined Hollywood noir. Somewhere along the way she meets Mitch, a cult lesbian filmmaker whom she idolises, and falls hard and fast for them. She follows them to America, hoping to win their heart and to finish the script—but the path to recovery is not linear, as Pearl soon discovers, and the lines between herself and Veronica begin to blur.
This novel alarmed me. At first, I wasn’t sure I could get on its level. The narrative is intense, fast-paced and, crucially, messy—but I don’t mean any of these things in a bad way. As I settled in, I realised how necessary they were. I bemoaned Pearl’s bad decisions only because they felt so real; it terrified me how much I related to her. I know how easy it is to do the exact opposite of what is good for you, when it feels like all you know. Robinson has an urgent way of writing that pulled me in and didn’t let go.
I felt the novel did well to represent the nuances of the parasocial relationship, whether that was with Mitch or Veronica Lake. We also feel Pearl’s dread in the blackouts, and catch flashes of her trauma, beginning to piece the cycle of addiction together. There is a third person narrative voice, but we remain entirely in Pearl’s head—I would maybe have preferred first person to make her unreliability clearer, but it still works. Other parts that didn’t quite rhyme also could have been my fault over Robinson’s—there were some characters that I didn’t like or found underdeveloped, and I don’t really like dropping quotation marks, as a rule, but these were minor beside the majority of the narrative, which I did really enjoy.
I liked how Pearl’s storyline flowed directly into the screenplay: it was especially impressive how smooth these transitions were, sometimes occurring mid-paragraph. Although fleeting, Veronica’s voice was distinct from Pearl’s, and I was charmed by her movie-inflected speech. My only qualm was that I would’ve liked a little more indication of what the film looked like visually.
Ultimately, Prairie Oyster is a compelling novel that marks a strong debut for Robinson in prose.
February 27, 2026
This was a fantastic read, it’s so messy but brilliant I could not put this down! The chaos, agony, betrayal, humour and obsession it’s so raw. The book is so well written it did not surprise me when I read that the author was a poet.
Pearl a 30 something who has given up London for a teaching post in the midlands, Pearl has some previous success in art house style films and now looking to start her next production an obsession she wants to bring to life of the 1940s femme fatale Veronica Lake.
It’s an interesting decision to make a film around this actress as Pearl is battling her own heavy drinking which turns into full blown alcoholism as well as starting an interesting and unhealthy bond with Mitch. Mitch who starts as a professional mentor to Pearl but soon takes a rather physical turn. I would not say romantic but passionate and at times obsessive.
I would say in my opinion Pearl is not a very likeable character, I can’t root for her but I can’t close my eyes at watching the toaster bath she has put herself in, all choices she has made are her own and you can feel her hitting her head against a brick wall time and time again. The writing of her attempted sobriety made me sweat, it was such a powerful section of the book going deeper into herself.
At times I cannot see where Pearl and Veronica differ, it’s tragic at times and you want to shake her. The wasted potential is painful, there is quite a lot of queer representation but not quoted as women loving women banner. This is not a love story nor a memoir or biography. It’s complex and at times slow given the acts the book is separated into where Pearl is always going deeper into herself and her attempted sobriety, never staying still UK, New York, LA, Iceland and at each stage the lakes film never gets any further but Pearl does drift further into herself or life imitating her art form.
I was given the opportunity to read via NetGalley and little brown book group uk, it’s out now and honestly give this a read, it is not what you would expect. You will have a laugh, feel the longing but also feel part of the pure obsession the book brings.
Pearl a 30 something who has given up London for a teaching post in the midlands, Pearl has some previous success in art house style films and now looking to start her next production an obsession she wants to bring to life of the 1940s femme fatale Veronica Lake.
It’s an interesting decision to make a film around this actress as Pearl is battling her own heavy drinking which turns into full blown alcoholism as well as starting an interesting and unhealthy bond with Mitch. Mitch who starts as a professional mentor to Pearl but soon takes a rather physical turn. I would not say romantic but passionate and at times obsessive.
I would say in my opinion Pearl is not a very likeable character, I can’t root for her but I can’t close my eyes at watching the toaster bath she has put herself in, all choices she has made are her own and you can feel her hitting her head against a brick wall time and time again. The writing of her attempted sobriety made me sweat, it was such a powerful section of the book going deeper into herself.
At times I cannot see where Pearl and Veronica differ, it’s tragic at times and you want to shake her. The wasted potential is painful, there is quite a lot of queer representation but not quoted as women loving women banner. This is not a love story nor a memoir or biography. It’s complex and at times slow given the acts the book is separated into where Pearl is always going deeper into herself and her attempted sobriety, never staying still UK, New York, LA, Iceland and at each stage the lakes film never gets any further but Pearl does drift further into herself or life imitating her art form.
I was given the opportunity to read via NetGalley and little brown book group uk, it’s out now and honestly give this a read, it is not what you would expect. You will have a laugh, feel the longing but also feel part of the pure obsession the book brings.
August 24, 2026
PRAIRIE OYSTER by Sophie Robinson feels hazy and a bit fractured at the beginning--and then we realize this is how Pearl, the main character, experiences her own life. She is unable to control her drinking (or her drug consumption) and what we (as readers) experience is intended to feel like the unsteady, fuzzy world Pearl occupies. As Pearl becomes sober, the language on the page becomes crisper, the images more clear, the characters' actions easier to understand or follow. Then we get Mitch, the much older filmmaker who has been a mentor to Pearl and, as the two reconnect, Mitch becomes Pearl's obsession. Pearl is an unlikeable character, an unreliable narrator--and she's not afraid to be real, especially on the page. Still, it's hard to see her become so determined to be the center of Mitch's attention. Even if it isn't clear to Pearl, it's obvious that no one will ever be as important to Mitch as Mitch is. They are a f*ckboi, though they pretend they aren't, and Pearl suffers mightily for her obsession with them.
Pearl is also a filmmaker, an Indie creator who had one film in particular catch the attention of the world of independent filmmaking. The way author Sophie Robinson describes these prior films makes them leap from the page. I felt like I had seen these films and could picture them in detail. I love the way Robinson writes about film and images on the screen; I was quite surprised to find that she is not a filmmaker. The Veronica Lake vignettes in PRAIRIE OYSTER were harder to "see." One reason for that may be that these vignettes or excerpts of Pearl's screenplay are introduced a bit too early, when Pearl's world is still so murky and fractured. (If the intent early in the book is to mix up the section of Veronica Lake with those of Pearl's life... it does not work.)
Overall, PRAIRIE OYSTER by Sophie Robinson is a harrowing and riveting portrayal of addiction, obsession, and sobriety. The ending of the novel feels so hard earned--and it's worth the read to get there.
Pearl is also a filmmaker, an Indie creator who had one film in particular catch the attention of the world of independent filmmaking. The way author Sophie Robinson describes these prior films makes them leap from the page. I felt like I had seen these films and could picture them in detail. I love the way Robinson writes about film and images on the screen; I was quite surprised to find that she is not a filmmaker. The Veronica Lake vignettes in PRAIRIE OYSTER were harder to "see." One reason for that may be that these vignettes or excerpts of Pearl's screenplay are introduced a bit too early, when Pearl's world is still so murky and fractured. (If the intent early in the book is to mix up the section of Veronica Lake with those of Pearl's life... it does not work.)
Overall, PRAIRIE OYSTER by Sophie Robinson is a harrowing and riveting portrayal of addiction, obsession, and sobriety. The ending of the novel feels so hard earned--and it's worth the read to get there.
June 5, 2026
*I received this arc in exchange for an honest review via NetGalley.*
I liked it! I think Robinson does something new in the current landscape of messy lesbian literature and the ‘hot girl fiction’ where it very deliberately does not romanticize substance abuse. The ugliness of Pearl’s alcoholism and substance abuse, the ouroboros of her ‘dating’ an absent older lesbian who is so similar to her absent alcoholic mother (even down to the fawning behavior she has to perform to get their attention), her self-sabotage and learned helplessness being bluntly challenged by everyone she impacts…. I want to compare it to Perfume and Pain by Anna Dorn for its modern lesbian take and substance use but it approaches the topics very very differently.
The pearl/oyster metaphors are very heavy-handed, but I enjoyed them. Pearl as the pearl of Pearl Sr.’s oyster, the oyster as the safe/familiar places, the oyster farm later on, the bodies of water, the lakes, Veronica Lake, her ashes being scattered in the ocean… It’s very obvious but still enjoyable.
I wish there was a bit more towards the end, though. I understand the entire book is Pearl suffering the consequences of her self-sabotage, obsession, and avoidance, but it does end quite abruptly with a lot still in the air. I wanted a conclusion, specifically, about what was going to happen with her previous life- she’d abandoned all of her bills, her best friend, her cat, and her professional career and ends the novel dodging phone calls and emails before the final scene. Another fifty pages of her returning home would’ve wrapped it up a little better, but I understand the appeal of an artistic finish, the final scene of her working project ‘The Lakes’.
I liked it! I think Robinson does something new in the current landscape of messy lesbian literature and the ‘hot girl fiction’ where it very deliberately does not romanticize substance abuse. The ugliness of Pearl’s alcoholism and substance abuse, the ouroboros of her ‘dating’ an absent older lesbian who is so similar to her absent alcoholic mother (even down to the fawning behavior she has to perform to get their attention), her self-sabotage and learned helplessness being bluntly challenged by everyone she impacts…. I want to compare it to Perfume and Pain by Anna Dorn for its modern lesbian take and substance use but it approaches the topics very very differently.
The pearl/oyster metaphors are very heavy-handed, but I enjoyed them. Pearl as the pearl of Pearl Sr.’s oyster, the oyster as the safe/familiar places, the oyster farm later on, the bodies of water, the lakes, Veronica Lake, her ashes being scattered in the ocean… It’s very obvious but still enjoyable.
I wish there was a bit more towards the end, though. I understand the entire book is Pearl suffering the consequences of her self-sabotage, obsession, and avoidance, but it does end quite abruptly with a lot still in the air. I wanted a conclusion, specifically, about what was going to happen with her previous life- she’d abandoned all of her bills, her best friend, her cat, and her professional career and ends the novel dodging phone calls and emails before the final scene. Another fifty pages of her returning home would’ve wrapped it up a little better, but I understand the appeal of an artistic finish, the final scene of her working project ‘The Lakes’.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 14, 2025
Prairie Oyster is a novel about an alcoholic filmmaker who finds herself chasing two things: the cult filmmaker she has a crush on, and her idea of a film about a 1940s star, Veronica Lake. Pearl is struggling, barely turning up for her teaching job in a film studies department because she's always hungover. When Mitch Meyer takes an interest in Pearl, with their interest not only in her work but also in Pearl herself, it seems like Pearl has finally found direction, but Mitch might not be the escape Pearl needs.
This book is told through Pearl's point of view, though in the third person, to give an unflinching look at addiction. In particular, the book gives a horrible insight into blackouts from drinking, and how destructive Pearl is even when trying to be sober. Her relationship with Mitch is also horrible to watch, as you can't help but see how things are going to unfold, and what it might mean for Pearl's self-destruction. I felt like I wasn't able to engage with the Veronica Lake side of the plot as well, as that is mostly told through interview snippets between bits of Pearl's narrative, but I liked how it sat alongside Pearl's story as well as being the focus of the film she's working on, and her quest in the US to find out more about Veronica.
Prairie Oyster wasn't what I expected going into it, turning out to be a book about alcoholism as well as a story about the complex relationships between people and their idols. I feel like maybe I could've gotten more out of it—other reviews talk about its references to The Bell Jar, which I didn't notice as it's a very long time since I've read it—but I still found it to be gripping and at times excruciating.
This book is told through Pearl's point of view, though in the third person, to give an unflinching look at addiction. In particular, the book gives a horrible insight into blackouts from drinking, and how destructive Pearl is even when trying to be sober. Her relationship with Mitch is also horrible to watch, as you can't help but see how things are going to unfold, and what it might mean for Pearl's self-destruction. I felt like I wasn't able to engage with the Veronica Lake side of the plot as well, as that is mostly told through interview snippets between bits of Pearl's narrative, but I liked how it sat alongside Pearl's story as well as being the focus of the film she's working on, and her quest in the US to find out more about Veronica.
Prairie Oyster wasn't what I expected going into it, turning out to be a book about alcoholism as well as a story about the complex relationships between people and their idols. I feel like maybe I could've gotten more out of it—other reviews talk about its references to The Bell Jar, which I didn't notice as it's a very long time since I've read it—but I still found it to be gripping and at times excruciating.
May 25, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley and University of Iowa Press for providing access to this ARC. What's exciting about having more queer literature and representation is the development of character archetypes, for example: the avoidant masculine non-binary love interest.
I began to wonder as devouring this book if I took have slept with Mitch.....and could commiserate and developed a trauma bond through every time lapse and silence that echoed loudly in my head while reading. Sophie Robinson seamlessly portrayed the dynamics of small community of exes being friends or new lovers already being acquaintance. The sapphic six degree of separation.
This book primarily focuses on addiction (sex, dugs, alcohol) rehabilitation and relapse. I cannot stress this enough you will not encounter more than two pages without this.
Unfortunately, while Robinson strongly creates and utilizes language, and to be fair this could be intentional or it could be self-sabotage- which in turn would all relate to the book - but the head-hopping creates whiplash that stings. It's just jarring - which once again may be intentional but its also really confusing at the beginning of the novel. Even an italics or different font would be helpful and less discombobulating.
I began to wonder as devouring this book if I took have slept with Mitch.....and could commiserate and developed a trauma bond through every time lapse and silence that echoed loudly in my head while reading. Sophie Robinson seamlessly portrayed the dynamics of small community of exes being friends or new lovers already being acquaintance. The sapphic six degree of separation.
This book primarily focuses on addiction (sex, dugs, alcohol) rehabilitation and relapse. I cannot stress this enough you will not encounter more than two pages without this.
Unfortunately, while Robinson strongly creates and utilizes language, and to be fair this could be intentional or it could be self-sabotage- which in turn would all relate to the book - but the head-hopping creates whiplash that stings. It's just jarring - which once again may be intentional but its also really confusing at the beginning of the novel. Even an italics or different font would be helpful and less discombobulating.
January 21, 2026
Prairie Oyster has kindly been sent to us ahead of its publication at the end of February.
This is a dinky book that packs a punch and doesn’t shy away from the tricky subjects. It’s a tale of queer romantic obsession, a stalling career and serious substance abuse and addiction.
I must admit I was concerned at the beginning of this that it wouldn’t be for me. Pearl is a film maker in her mid thirties and is in the midst of an addiction fuelled breakdown. While trying to get herself sober and reignite her career, she embarks upon an obsessive relationship with Mitch, a lesbian cult filmmaker who is twice Pearl’s age and seems to have their own set of problems. The story is told in tandem with that of Veronica Lake, the 1940s film star, also plagued by alcoholism and the focus of Pearl’s next film making project.
It’s extremely messy, not at all glamorous and Pearl’s level of self sabotage and addiction made it tricky for me to root for her. A gritty take on an artistic career where things are often seen with rose tinted glasses, I was surprised by the depth of this read despite its small size. It wasn’t a relaxing read at all, but it was certainly very honest and captivating in a car crash can’t look away manner!
This is a dinky book that packs a punch and doesn’t shy away from the tricky subjects. It’s a tale of queer romantic obsession, a stalling career and serious substance abuse and addiction.
I must admit I was concerned at the beginning of this that it wouldn’t be for me. Pearl is a film maker in her mid thirties and is in the midst of an addiction fuelled breakdown. While trying to get herself sober and reignite her career, she embarks upon an obsessive relationship with Mitch, a lesbian cult filmmaker who is twice Pearl’s age and seems to have their own set of problems. The story is told in tandem with that of Veronica Lake, the 1940s film star, also plagued by alcoholism and the focus of Pearl’s next film making project.
It’s extremely messy, not at all glamorous and Pearl’s level of self sabotage and addiction made it tricky for me to root for her. A gritty take on an artistic career where things are often seen with rose tinted glasses, I was surprised by the depth of this read despite its small size. It wasn’t a relaxing read at all, but it was certainly very honest and captivating in a car crash can’t look away manner!
August 24, 2026
Prairie Oyster is an emotional read that pulls you in from the very beginning. Pearl's struggle with her creativity while teaching and navigating life is real for those of us who've been in similar situations. Her self-imposed requirement to remain relevant while coming across as sophisticated and well-versed leads to unending heartbreak and cringeworthy moments throughout the story. Her relationship with Mitch, likewise, depicts how addictive behaviors can carry over beyond substances to relationships. Throughout the novel, we are presented with parallels between Pearl and the former movie star she is obsessed with, Veronica Lake. Veronica's own life is fraught, and the juxtaposition brings the reader further into the obsession Pearl has with her. In some ways, Pearl mimics Veronica's life and outlook despite knowing that Veronica lived a tragic life. Overall, I found this a heartfelt and engaging novel, albeit deeply sad. While a happy ending isn't required, I found the conclusion of the story flat as we are left to ponder if Pearl can ever find healing. I would say that it can be a tough read for those in recovery or who are deeply empathetic to the challenges depicted.
March 2, 2026
This is a beautifully written novel, which interweaves Veronica Lake into the world of the protagonist, Pearl. From the first page, the writing is electric - sharp, poetic, and brimming with hunger. Robinson brings such intensity and clarity to themes of desire, addiction, art, and obsession that it reads both deeply personal and universally resonant.
What I loved most is how fearless this novel is. It doesn’t tidy up the messy parts of being human, it leans into them. Pearl is flawed, passionate, and painfully real, and Robinson writes her with harsh truth, daringly erring.
There’s dark humour threaded throughout, balancing moments of raw vulnerability with biting insight.
You can feel Robinson’s background as a poet, the prose is lyrical without ever feeling indulgent. It’s visceral and tender at the same time. Some passages are so beautifully written I had to stop and reread them.
This is one of those books that lingers long after you’ve finished it. Bold, intelligent, and emotionally charged, Prairie Oyster is a stunning debut and one I’ll be recommending widely.
What I loved most is how fearless this novel is. It doesn’t tidy up the messy parts of being human, it leans into them. Pearl is flawed, passionate, and painfully real, and Robinson writes her with harsh truth, daringly erring.
There’s dark humour threaded throughout, balancing moments of raw vulnerability with biting insight.
You can feel Robinson’s background as a poet, the prose is lyrical without ever feeling indulgent. It’s visceral and tender at the same time. Some passages are so beautifully written I had to stop and reread them.
This is one of those books that lingers long after you’ve finished it. Bold, intelligent, and emotionally charged, Prairie Oyster is a stunning debut and one I’ll be recommending widely.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Review copy from NetGalley.
It's strange to say I enjoyed this, as it's really quite stressful to read about this character relapsing in her addiction. I really liked the way Robinson wrote this. She reminds me somewhat of Melissa Broder, in that she has a heavy focus on bodily sensations and doesn't shy away from the reality of being in a body like mainstream fiction tends to. The writing is complex without feeling pretentious and suits Pearl's character perfectly.
Robinson brings together this work about addiction, fame, obsession and art very successfully. At points I wanted to shake the main character and tell her that she's simply too old to be wilfully misunderstanding the depth of her relationship with Mitch. That she's too clever to be fannying about on benders with her friends instead of doing her job, but Pearl wouldn't listen because that's the nature of addiction.
I'm sure I'll read whatever Robinson brings out next.
It's strange to say I enjoyed this, as it's really quite stressful to read about this character relapsing in her addiction. I really liked the way Robinson wrote this. She reminds me somewhat of Melissa Broder, in that she has a heavy focus on bodily sensations and doesn't shy away from the reality of being in a body like mainstream fiction tends to. The writing is complex without feeling pretentious and suits Pearl's character perfectly.
Robinson brings together this work about addiction, fame, obsession and art very successfully. At points I wanted to shake the main character and tell her that she's simply too old to be wilfully misunderstanding the depth of her relationship with Mitch. That she's too clever to be fannying about on benders with her friends instead of doing her job, but Pearl wouldn't listen because that's the nature of addiction.
I'm sure I'll read whatever Robinson brings out next.
July 3, 2026
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley.
This book was like a slow-motion train wreck you can’t look away from. I was immediately intrigued by its exploration of queer obsession and by the way it captures the kind of lover who gives you just enough crumbs to keep you coming back.
It follows Pearl, a filmmaker on the verge of an addiction-fueled breakdown. When she falls for cult filmmaker Mitch, she becomes consumed by the scraps of attention Mitch offers that are just enough to keep her hooked.
My favorite part of the novel was the way Veronica Lake’s life was woven throughout the story. I didn’t know much about her going in, and I found myself constantly stopping to Google the details. Her life was so sad and tragic. I was fascinated by the parallels between Veronica’s life and Pearl’s unraveling.
Unfortunately, I found that the novel dragged a bit for me in places, and I found myself feeling more like an observer than fully immersed in the story. I wanted to be pulled deeper into Pearl’s obsession than I ultimately was. But the Veronica Lake sections more than made up for this, compelling me to turn the pages to find out what happened next.
Even so, I enjoyed this unsettling look at addiction, longing, and fixation. It’s messy, uncomfortable, and compelling. If you’re drawn to character-driven stories about people making questionable choices they can’t seem to stop making, this one is worth picking up.
This book was like a slow-motion train wreck you can’t look away from. I was immediately intrigued by its exploration of queer obsession and by the way it captures the kind of lover who gives you just enough crumbs to keep you coming back.
It follows Pearl, a filmmaker on the verge of an addiction-fueled breakdown. When she falls for cult filmmaker Mitch, she becomes consumed by the scraps of attention Mitch offers that are just enough to keep her hooked.
My favorite part of the novel was the way Veronica Lake’s life was woven throughout the story. I didn’t know much about her going in, and I found myself constantly stopping to Google the details. Her life was so sad and tragic. I was fascinated by the parallels between Veronica’s life and Pearl’s unraveling.
Unfortunately, I found that the novel dragged a bit for me in places, and I found myself feeling more like an observer than fully immersed in the story. I wanted to be pulled deeper into Pearl’s obsession than I ultimately was. But the Veronica Lake sections more than made up for this, compelling me to turn the pages to find out what happened next.
Even so, I enjoyed this unsettling look at addiction, longing, and fixation. It’s messy, uncomfortable, and compelling. If you’re drawn to character-driven stories about people making questionable choices they can’t seem to stop making, this one is worth picking up.
July 21, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.
I really enjoyed this book. Short and (not so) sweet, I ripped through this in a day. I think the dual POV/timeline aspect between Pearl in modern day and Veronica in her prime was done so well, and really showed the parallels between the two characters; while also showing the parallels we can draw to the past as readers as well. It reminded me a bit of the Emma Roberts “Nancy Drew” movie in a way which made it feel nostalgic.
I will say, I feel like I’ve read a lot of sapphic literature at this point, and a lot of the tropes and themes in this felt familiar to the point of unoriginality. Maybe it reads to others as universal queer experience, which I love for them! To me, I’m excited to be able to read brand new queer stories.
All-in-all, this was a great read and I’m grateful to have had it grace me. :)
I really enjoyed this book. Short and (not so) sweet, I ripped through this in a day. I think the dual POV/timeline aspect between Pearl in modern day and Veronica in her prime was done so well, and really showed the parallels between the two characters; while also showing the parallels we can draw to the past as readers as well. It reminded me a bit of the Emma Roberts “Nancy Drew” movie in a way which made it feel nostalgic.
I will say, I feel like I’ve read a lot of sapphic literature at this point, and a lot of the tropes and themes in this felt familiar to the point of unoriginality. Maybe it reads to others as universal queer experience, which I love for them! To me, I’m excited to be able to read brand new queer stories.
All-in-all, this was a great read and I’m grateful to have had it grace me. :)
March 15, 2026
I like books where we can see the character spiraling downwards, and we see them reach rock bottom, and for me, this book is exactly that.
We follow Pearl as she tries to get sober, succeededs and, in my opinion, succeeded by changing an addiction with another - Mitch.
We see the development of a very weird and toxic adjacent maybe situationship between them and how this completely dominates her life to then see the mess of getting out.
I liked the narrative, but she frustrated me so much, and the part where Leigh talks about learned helplessness feels very spot on to this character. She really frustrated me during the book, and that is why the rating is this low. I saw that I enjoyed the plot.
I didn't care for the poetry-adjacent parts, but this is personal preference and not a dig at the story.
Solid three. Nothing outstanding, wouldn't necessarily recommend.
We follow Pearl as she tries to get sober, succeededs and, in my opinion, succeeded by changing an addiction with another - Mitch.
We see the development of a very weird and toxic adjacent maybe situationship between them and how this completely dominates her life to then see the mess of getting out.
I liked the narrative, but she frustrated me so much, and the part where Leigh talks about learned helplessness feels very spot on to this character. She really frustrated me during the book, and that is why the rating is this low. I saw that I enjoyed the plot.
I didn't care for the poetry-adjacent parts, but this is personal preference and not a dig at the story.
Solid three. Nothing outstanding, wouldn't necessarily recommend.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 17, 2026
Rating 2.5 rounded up to 3.
The writing is poetic while describing a very difficult and messy life.
Although an interesting exploration of addiction in many forms I wasn't able to really engage with the story. I was put off by how the story changed from the thoughts of one of the main characters, to their thoughts, and going back and forth in time. There were distinct decisions made in the editing and formatting that helped to add to my confusion.
I think it would be beneficial to add in content warnings for this book - the write up does discuss addiction - but there is also a sexual assault involving a minor and I would have liked to know that before finding it on the page. Had I known about that I wouldn't have requested this book.
Thank you to University of Iowa press for providing an advanced digital copy via NetGalley for me to read and review.
The writing is poetic while describing a very difficult and messy life.
Although an interesting exploration of addiction in many forms I wasn't able to really engage with the story. I was put off by how the story changed from the thoughts of one of the main characters, to their thoughts, and going back and forth in time. There were distinct decisions made in the editing and formatting that helped to add to my confusion.
I think it would be beneficial to add in content warnings for this book - the write up does discuss addiction - but there is also a sexual assault involving a minor and I would have liked to know that before finding it on the page. Had I known about that I wouldn't have requested this book.
Thank you to University of Iowa press for providing an advanced digital copy via NetGalley for me to read and review.
June 9, 2026
This was a rather intense and raw story of Pearl, a woman who is trying to get her career back on track while dealing with addictions and obsessions.
The way Pearl was written left me feeling sad, mostly because she was real and raw. Her experiences are not unlike many who are struggling with keeping a clean life.
At times this was difficult to read mostly because I saw my younger self in Pearl. Her obsession with Mitch was painful to read at times, and honestly, Mitch sucks.
The prose was powerful, and flowing. Although at times it was a bit difficult to stay on track as the pov shifted briefly throughout.
Overall, a good, sad lesbian book.
Thank you NetGalley for this ARC
The way Pearl was written left me feeling sad, mostly because she was real and raw. Her experiences are not unlike many who are struggling with keeping a clean life.
At times this was difficult to read mostly because I saw my younger self in Pearl. Her obsession with Mitch was painful to read at times, and honestly, Mitch sucks.
The prose was powerful, and flowing. Although at times it was a bit difficult to stay on track as the pov shifted briefly throughout.
Overall, a good, sad lesbian book.
Thank you NetGalley for this ARC
April 21, 2026
I had high hopes for this book as it sounded totally up my street but it didn't fulfill what i was expecting of it. The main character was okay to follow but it felt like something was missing from her charactisation. I liked the writing and felt like it fit the tone that was needed to be conveyed. The side characters could have been slightly more developed. I think this isn't a bad book but i just found it underwhelming and didn't deliver what i needed it to.
I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for a honest review.
I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for a honest review.
July 26, 2026
Review of advance copy received by Net Galley
This book was an unusual whirlwind, as much as the protagonist’s life described in it.
The story builds and eventually drags even a skeptical reader with it. I found the parallels with Veronica Lake’s story quite beautiful and perhaps a touch unexplored.
Overall, reads very smoothly but at the same time packs a punch from several different fronts, all in less than 200 pages. Bravo.
Thanks to the author, the publisher & Net Galley for an advance copy of the book
This book was an unusual whirlwind, as much as the protagonist’s life described in it.
The story builds and eventually drags even a skeptical reader with it. I found the parallels with Veronica Lake’s story quite beautiful and perhaps a touch unexplored.
Overall, reads very smoothly but at the same time packs a punch from several different fronts, all in less than 200 pages. Bravo.
Thanks to the author, the publisher & Net Galley for an advance copy of the book
November 25, 2025
This should have worked much better for me than it actually did as I was all there for the subject matter of a woman on the verge of a breakdown, with her alcoholism, mental health issues and intense affair - but this is written in that dry and detached style that simply doesn't work for me. It feels very 'told' so that I was at arms' length from the narrative at all times - sorry, just a stylistic mis-match with this reader.
Thanks to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley
Thanks to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley
August 2, 2026
Difficult to say that it was enjoyable, given the subject matter. But extremely insightful and unflinching look at addiction.
I want to believe that Pearl has found a way out. Especially given how common this human condition is— across lives and within lives.
Spoiler part: I’m not sure I understand Act 5, which is a shame. Up until then I felt that it was 5-stars for me. Maybe I should read that part again?
I want to believe that Pearl has found a way out. Especially given how common this human condition is— across lives and within lives.
Spoiler part: I’m not sure I understand Act 5, which is a shame. Up until then I felt that it was 5-stars for me. Maybe I should read that part again?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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