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Backstitch
Set in an art gallery in the Washington, DC area, and structured as a journey through the gallery’s rooms, Backstitch is the story of two sisters who reunite at a retrospective of their troubled mother’s art and must confront the consequences of her ambition and the difficult, private truths behind the family’s public narrative. The novel is an exploration of family ties, the gift and cost of artistic talent, and the legacy that the artist’s daughters must carry.
314 pages, Paperback
First published March 3, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Backstitch by Marian Mitchell Donahue captures how an insidious web of mundane interpersonal trauma affects a feminist artist and her family in the early 2000s.
Art gallery exhibits are curated and highly polished. They present an artist and their work in a sanitized, often celebratory context. Backstitch takes place in a posthumous retrospective exhibit highlighting the feminist work of Alice Snyder which is curated by her adult daughter, Marigold. The exhibit forces Marigold’s sister, Violet, to recall her tumultuous childhood growing up with Alice’s mercurial temper and obsessive artistic drive. Alice forced Violet and Marigold to sit for hours in the dead of night to capture their portraits when they were young children. She put her artistic career ahead of their emotional wellbeing and fought violently with their loving but passive father, Arthur. Flitting at the edges of their childhood was the sparse but monumental presence of a man named Gabriel Grant, with whom Alice had a complicated history. We see the toll this instability takes on young Violet and Marigold as they grow up and form a tight bond with each other. Mitchell Donahue’s description of their childhood is realistic and transparent—she captures the formative moments of their lives amid the quotidian unrest. She deftly communicates the ways children (especially children growing up in an emotionally unstable environment) understand, cope with, and internalize the adult drama that swirls around them.
Around the halfway point, the book switches its focus to Alice’s backstory and her relationship with her ex, Gabriel Grant, and her future husband, Arthur. This shift in narrative is unexpected but effective. Through Violet’s young eyes, Alice is an enormous and often cruel presence. But now we get to see Alice as a vulnerable young woman who clings to the narcissistic and mentally unstable Grant after a childhood of neglect. We also get to see Arthur’s perspective as he brings a pregnant Alice into his life after Grant abandons her. Desperate to give Alice and her children the loving, stable home he did not have growing up, Arthur calmly accepts his wife’s mood swings and works hard to provide a safe space for his children. But his caring passivity collapses into complicity as he cannot—or will not—protect Violet and Marigold from their mother’s dangerous volatility and Grant’s pernicious interference in their lives.
Mitchell Donahue brings in Alice and Arthur’s stories not to excuse the ways that they failed their children, but to illustrate the complex and uneven ways generational trauma radiates through familial connections. It is Alice’s and Arthur’s vulnerable humanity that lend the story its tragedy and unexpected tenderness.
At times, Backstitch appears a little unfocused as it switches fluidly between perspectives and timelines. But the purpose is not to gain a complete timeline of events, nor is it to completely flesh out every character’s story. Rather, it promotes a compassionate curiosity about its characters’ lives and ponders how artistic expression can shape and be shaped by the nuances of human experience.
Thank you to NetGalley and Galiot Pressfor providing me with an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Art gallery exhibits are curated and highly polished. They present an artist and their work in a sanitized, often celebratory context. Backstitch takes place in a posthumous retrospective exhibit highlighting the feminist work of Alice Snyder which is curated by her adult daughter, Marigold. The exhibit forces Marigold’s sister, Violet, to recall her tumultuous childhood growing up with Alice’s mercurial temper and obsessive artistic drive. Alice forced Violet and Marigold to sit for hours in the dead of night to capture their portraits when they were young children. She put her artistic career ahead of their emotional wellbeing and fought violently with their loving but passive father, Arthur. Flitting at the edges of their childhood was the sparse but monumental presence of a man named Gabriel Grant, with whom Alice had a complicated history. We see the toll this instability takes on young Violet and Marigold as they grow up and form a tight bond with each other. Mitchell Donahue’s description of their childhood is realistic and transparent—she captures the formative moments of their lives amid the quotidian unrest. She deftly communicates the ways children (especially children growing up in an emotionally unstable environment) understand, cope with, and internalize the adult drama that swirls around them.
Around the halfway point, the book switches its focus to Alice’s backstory and her relationship with her ex, Gabriel Grant, and her future husband, Arthur. This shift in narrative is unexpected but effective. Through Violet’s young eyes, Alice is an enormous and often cruel presence. But now we get to see Alice as a vulnerable young woman who clings to the narcissistic and mentally unstable Grant after a childhood of neglect. We also get to see Arthur’s perspective as he brings a pregnant Alice into his life after Grant abandons her. Desperate to give Alice and her children the loving, stable home he did not have growing up, Arthur calmly accepts his wife’s mood swings and works hard to provide a safe space for his children. But his caring passivity collapses into complicity as he cannot—or will not—protect Violet and Marigold from their mother’s dangerous volatility and Grant’s pernicious interference in their lives.
Mitchell Donahue brings in Alice and Arthur’s stories not to excuse the ways that they failed their children, but to illustrate the complex and uneven ways generational trauma radiates through familial connections. It is Alice’s and Arthur’s vulnerable humanity that lend the story its tragedy and unexpected tenderness.
At times, Backstitch appears a little unfocused as it switches fluidly between perspectives and timelines. But the purpose is not to gain a complete timeline of events, nor is it to completely flesh out every character’s story. Rather, it promotes a compassionate curiosity about its characters’ lives and ponders how artistic expression can shape and be shaped by the nuances of human experience.
Thank you to NetGalley and Galiot Pressfor providing me with an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
I'm always saying that I love a book that starts with a map, but this is the first novel I've read where the map is an art gallery. The unique framing of the story, told by way of an adult child viewing her recently-deceased mother's art at a curated exhibit, is extremely well done here. Each piece is described vividly—if you have a visual processing brain, this will feel like you've actually seen the artist's work—and attached to a memory that layers within the framework to build a complete picture of the lives of the family surrounding the artist.
What worked me:
* The format is refreshing and well executed: The layering of the memories works almost like a puzzle. You see the same moments of their lives through the perspective of different characters as the daughter moves through the exhibit. With each reveal, the picture of the family dynamics gains clarity.
* The setting and characters felt familiar: I'm not an artist. I didn't go to art school. (Also, I'm not an astronomer.) Actually, I didn't go to college at all. But I spent enough time hanging out with art students who were, truly, toiling and striving, to recognize the world they're in. This book is chock full of late nineties nostalgia.
* The relationship between the sisters: What a beautifully rendered relationship. The way the siblings come together, support each other, hide within each other, and disappoint each other was believable and moving. They are the heart of the novel, and I loved them.
What didn't work as well:
* The plot resolution of the novel was satisfying—but, the relational resolution [without spoilers] did not work for me. The way the various family members respond to the final moments of the book felt out of step with how some of them had acted throughout. I don't mind when a character disappoints me, but there was a missing piece for a specific character's actions that I really wanted explored.
* The story starts in a hard place. The beginning of the book starts with the memories of the daughters when they were young, being used as models in their mother's art. These scenes were hard and, while they are important for how the story is told, I almost didn't want to continue.
* The larger theme of who owns a likeness feels so important in the age of AI art. This book is set before the current AI explosion, but I couldn't help reading this without that lens. I wish the story had gone back to the opening issue of the photo that starts the narrative just a touch more.
All in all, this book feels different and special. (I clearly want to talk about it!) Would make an excellent book club pick, because there are so many themes and the format is so unique.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
What worked me:
* The format is refreshing and well executed: The layering of the memories works almost like a puzzle. You see the same moments of their lives through the perspective of different characters as the daughter moves through the exhibit. With each reveal, the picture of the family dynamics gains clarity.
* The setting and characters felt familiar: I'm not an artist. I didn't go to art school. (Also, I'm not an astronomer.) Actually, I didn't go to college at all. But I spent enough time hanging out with art students who were, truly, toiling and striving, to recognize the world they're in. This book is chock full of late nineties nostalgia.
* The relationship between the sisters: What a beautifully rendered relationship. The way the siblings come together, support each other, hide within each other, and disappoint each other was believable and moving. They are the heart of the novel, and I loved them.
What didn't work as well:
* The plot resolution of the novel was satisfying—but, the relational resolution [without spoilers] did not work for me. The way the various family members respond to the final moments of the book felt out of step with how some of them had acted throughout. I don't mind when a character disappoints me, but there was a missing piece for a specific character's actions that I really wanted explored.
* The story starts in a hard place. The beginning of the book starts with the memories of the daughters when they were young, being used as models in their mother's art. These scenes were hard and, while they are important for how the story is told, I almost didn't want to continue.
* The larger theme of who owns a likeness feels so important in the age of AI art. This book is set before the current AI explosion, but I couldn't help reading this without that lens. I wish the story had gone back to the opening issue of the photo that starts the narrative just a touch more.
All in all, this book feels different and special. (I clearly want to talk about it!) Would make an excellent book club pick, because there are so many themes and the format is so unique.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
What a cleverly organized novel! The story revolves around a woman visiting a gallery exhibiting the work of her mother, the artist Alice Snyder, after her tragic death in a house fire. The reader is taken piece by piece and room by room to reconstruct the woman’s past and the effects it had on her daughters’ lives. Interestingly, we are taken back further and further into the past as the gallery moves forward through Alice’s art career, slowly understanding more and more until the final installation brings it all beautifully together. The author’s talent for describing the art of the novel and integrating art history makes this novel even richer.
Memories of Alice, her older daughter Violet, and her younger daughter Marigold allow us to see how trauma affected the woman who became motherless at a young age and a mother before she had even begun her art career. These scenes of the young mother working with her young daughters were some of the most gutting of the novel. It really captured the difficulty women face in trying to keep a sense of self and purpose when they also become caretakers of young children who demand so much of them. This novel depicts a family that is hurt, that struggles to find balance, but that ultimately tries to show love in the ways that it is capable of doing so. It’s a sad novel, critiquing the way women can be taken advantage of and can struggle to make a name for themselves, but it’s also a novel about reclaiming what has been taken from you and making something beautiful out of it. What does it mean to be The Girl in the Picture—to be observed from all angles, molded according to someone else’s fantasies, and misunderstood when you fight back?
What a privilege to be able to read this brilliant debut novel. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.
Memories of Alice, her older daughter Violet, and her younger daughter Marigold allow us to see how trauma affected the woman who became motherless at a young age and a mother before she had even begun her art career. These scenes of the young mother working with her young daughters were some of the most gutting of the novel. It really captured the difficulty women face in trying to keep a sense of self and purpose when they also become caretakers of young children who demand so much of them. This novel depicts a family that is hurt, that struggles to find balance, but that ultimately tries to show love in the ways that it is capable of doing so. It’s a sad novel, critiquing the way women can be taken advantage of and can struggle to make a name for themselves, but it’s also a novel about reclaiming what has been taken from you and making something beautiful out of it. What does it mean to be The Girl in the Picture—to be observed from all angles, molded according to someone else’s fantasies, and misunderstood when you fight back?
What a privilege to be able to read this brilliant debut novel. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Backstitch is a novel that shows the side of an artist through the eyes of her two daughters. I will say this story started off a little slow for me but once I started reading a little bit more I finally got a good start and came to gradually like it. You really have to admire the dedication these two girls put in displaying their mothers art. Thry may not have had the best relationship with her but they knew if they wanted her legacy to continue displaying her artwork was the best option.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews