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New York Mosaic: Do I Wake or Sleep, The Christmas Tree, Many Mansions
In all three of these novels voices move the stories - each carefully constructed narrative is built by the layering of conversation, perception, and inner monologue onto lyrical descriptions of a vibrating New York City.
In Do I Wake or Sleep, the lives of two Americans (a journalist and an alcoholic novelist) and a beautiful European refugee intersect for just twenty-four hours as a witty contrast of American and European culture unfolds.
In The Christmas Tree, the elderly Mrs. Danforth is celebrating the holidays with her grandson, the boy's mother, and new step-father, when her homosexual son, the boy's father, appears on the scene with his lover and the story draws to its tragic conclusion.
In Many Mansions, the voice is that of Margaret Sylvester, in her eighties, living alone in a New York hotel room. She decides, after considerable deliberation, to reread an unpublished manuscript about her life and her poignant and sometimes tragic story is communicated with astonishing brevity and immediacy.
In Do I Wake or Sleep, the lives of two Americans (a journalist and an alcoholic novelist) and a beautiful European refugee intersect for just twenty-four hours as a witty contrast of American and European culture unfolds.
In The Christmas Tree, the elderly Mrs. Danforth is celebrating the holidays with her grandson, the boy's mother, and new step-father, when her homosexual son, the boy's father, appears on the scene with his lover and the story draws to its tragic conclusion.
In Many Mansions, the voice is that of Margaret Sylvester, in her eighties, living alone in a New York hotel room. She decides, after considerable deliberation, to reread an unpublished manuscript about her life and her poignant and sometimes tragic story is communicated with astonishing brevity and immediacy.
496 pages, Paperback
First published October 15, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
April 13, 2021
Gore Vidal and Edmund Wilson thought her a genius, which perhaps tells you something of her style - that particular New York, high-society brilliance - and I agree with them completely. The first novel in particular was so astonishingly wonderful it often made me feel close to dancing with joy. I agree too that there are echoes of Henry James and Woolf, but also early Kay Boyle and something very much her own.
Highly recommended.
More can be read here:
https://www.themodernnovel.org/americ...
https://themillions.com/2016/04/await...
And on another of her books here:
https://neglectedbooks.com/?p=7904
Highly recommended.
More can be read here:
https://www.themodernnovel.org/americ...
https://themillions.com/2016/04/await...
And on another of her books here:
https://neglectedbooks.com/?p=7904
April 20, 2021
She had been in her brief existence two distinctly different beings, and one of these was the creature she was before and the other the creature she had become after reading the works of Marcel Proust. No, but really; she wasn’t joking. From this experience she’d emerged with all manner of extensions, reinforcements, renewals of her entire nervous system—indeed she might say that she’d been endowed with a perfectly new apparatus for apprehending the vibrations of other people’s souls. She was saying this most awkwardly, she knew, but she often wondered if we sufficiently realized the effect that Proust had had upon our awareness of one another, for whether we liked it or not, we were forced to take about with us wherever we went this extraordinary apparatus, recording accurately a thousand little matters of which we had not formerly been aware…Isabel Bolton is, hands down, one of The Greats; however, she’s been horrifically buried, neglected, and all but forgotten. Bolton’s the direct descendent of Henry James, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and in the same textual genealogy as Elizabeth Bowen and Kay Boyle.
Her descriptions in this collection of short novels—of interior lives amid the clamor of an ever-changing world, in the glare of Manhattan’s myriad streetlights and social scenes, and of the very real horrors of aging and becoming more aware that the world (the city) will go on without you—are so incredibly incisive and heart-rending to read, to cherish, to admire.
Do your part in unburying Bolton if the modernist lineage above is your cuppa.
Read
March 17, 2016The three novels collected here were published between 1946 and 1952 to no acclaim at all. They sank into oblivion, recognized only by Diana Trilling, who compared the author to Henry James, and Edmund Wilson. Decades later Gore Vidal reviewed them, and suggested Wilson’s enthusiasm was at least in part stimulated by the gender of the author, whom he did not know was in her late sixties. Either way, they were at least recognized by two people whose work would remain available, so that Doris Grumbach, discovering them in 1978, could do the work that would bring them back into print 50 years after their first publication. Isabel Bolton is a pseudonym for Mary Britton Millar, about whom practically nothing is known. She was born 1883 and died in 1975. She lived in the Village, along with many other authors of her vintage. I came across Bolton in Steven Dillon’s Wolf-Women and Phantom Ladies: Female Desire in 1940s US Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015.). Millar wrote poetry, and a memoir of her childhood, which is supposed to be brilliant. She is quoted as saying that all fiction is autobiography, so I am guessing that the stories she tells in these three novels are close to life, if not memoir.
New York Mosaic is a beautiful book in which the city of New York shimmers. Page after page is filled with the incidental detail of life in the city, of its sounds, its moods and its odors and especially, the fragrance of its time. The similarity to James is the use of a consciousness through which all of the action is filtered, mixing memory and desire. But where James is suggestive and elusive, especially with sex, Bolton is explicit. There are naked people in these books, gay people, lovers, and orgasms, but no condemnation or judgment.
In Do I wake or Do I Sleep practically nothing happens at all. It is set shortly before World War 2. A charming, shallow socialite, Bridget, meets her friends Millicent (through whose eyes the story unfolds) and Percy for lunch. Cocktails follow, then a light dinner, and then a party. To give the bones of the plot is to betray the magic of this novel, for it is in the weaving of Millicent’s past and her observations of the people around her that the warmth and loveliness of the story lies. People get drunk at a long and tedious cocktail party. There is an act of violence. Millicent flies to the rescue of Percy, and Bridget falls in love for the 25th time. It sounds obnoxious but it is not. It is a glimpse at New York’s smoke filled martini parties, and of the apocalyptic feel of hypermodern architecture, as well as French restaurants, where they dine on Dover sole brought in by ship. The deepest note of unease, the dissonant bass note thrumming to the surface periodically, is Hitler, and the crisis caused by Bridget’s secret, that she has a daughter living in Austria, and that the father is Jewish.
The Christmas Tree is much more astonishing and melodramatic. The filter here is Hilly Danforth, older than Millicent by at least ten years, a grandmother caring for her 5 year old grandson, Henry. It is Christmas Eve in 1945. Henry’s mother Anne is returning to New York from Reno, where she has divorced Hilly’s son Larry and married a war hero, The Captain. Larry is gay, and explicitly so. Because of a series of telegrams, Larry is coming to New York too, and his boyfriend, whom he breaks up with, George, follows him. Larry, George, Anne and the Captain converge on Hilly’s apartment, and the expected narrative explosion occurs. But long before this Hilly has stripped back every layer of her life, and of the wealthy, nasty, duplicitous family she comes from. In this book the apocalyptic feel increases, as Henry plays with a B24 bomber, the one used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bolton explores desire initially through the language of psychoanalysis, a fad at the time, but radiates far beyond it.
The last volume, Many Mansions, is set in 1950, and is narrated through the mind of an 84 year old woman. Again the past is plundered, and again by a woman solitary. Now she is old and she explores her loneliness, the fact that she has never married, and the consequences of a child she bore out of wedlock and who is taken from her by Victorian custom. She has written a novel, and she rereads this novel while preparing to meet a young man she knows to give him 50 dollars. Through the course of the novel her life funnels into an isolation she accepts but is disturbed by. There is a climax, again somewhat melodramatic, but to me, that makes no difference for again it is the texture of memory, of the city, and of the sense both writer and protagonist bring to the crises that have shaped her life.
All three women are stoic in the face of horrendous loss. There is no self-pity in these pages even where there is great loss and pain. If anything, the pain of the narrators is something she is curious about, something that must be solved, and this individual pain is always contextualized by the events of the time, especially of the 30’s and the war. Her emotional vocabulary and her ability to convey feeling as well as a style that allows the story to hover above the plot like mist above a lake in extraordinary. In this sense I think John Williams’ Stoner is the book that comes closest to it both in method and mood, which places it in rare company.
I loved these books, wildly.
New York Mosaic is a beautiful book in which the city of New York shimmers. Page after page is filled with the incidental detail of life in the city, of its sounds, its moods and its odors and especially, the fragrance of its time. The similarity to James is the use of a consciousness through which all of the action is filtered, mixing memory and desire. But where James is suggestive and elusive, especially with sex, Bolton is explicit. There are naked people in these books, gay people, lovers, and orgasms, but no condemnation or judgment.
In Do I wake or Do I Sleep practically nothing happens at all. It is set shortly before World War 2. A charming, shallow socialite, Bridget, meets her friends Millicent (through whose eyes the story unfolds) and Percy for lunch. Cocktails follow, then a light dinner, and then a party. To give the bones of the plot is to betray the magic of this novel, for it is in the weaving of Millicent’s past and her observations of the people around her that the warmth and loveliness of the story lies. People get drunk at a long and tedious cocktail party. There is an act of violence. Millicent flies to the rescue of Percy, and Bridget falls in love for the 25th time. It sounds obnoxious but it is not. It is a glimpse at New York’s smoke filled martini parties, and of the apocalyptic feel of hypermodern architecture, as well as French restaurants, where they dine on Dover sole brought in by ship. The deepest note of unease, the dissonant bass note thrumming to the surface periodically, is Hitler, and the crisis caused by Bridget’s secret, that she has a daughter living in Austria, and that the father is Jewish.
The Christmas Tree is much more astonishing and melodramatic. The filter here is Hilly Danforth, older than Millicent by at least ten years, a grandmother caring for her 5 year old grandson, Henry. It is Christmas Eve in 1945. Henry’s mother Anne is returning to New York from Reno, where she has divorced Hilly’s son Larry and married a war hero, The Captain. Larry is gay, and explicitly so. Because of a series of telegrams, Larry is coming to New York too, and his boyfriend, whom he breaks up with, George, follows him. Larry, George, Anne and the Captain converge on Hilly’s apartment, and the expected narrative explosion occurs. But long before this Hilly has stripped back every layer of her life, and of the wealthy, nasty, duplicitous family she comes from. In this book the apocalyptic feel increases, as Henry plays with a B24 bomber, the one used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bolton explores desire initially through the language of psychoanalysis, a fad at the time, but radiates far beyond it.
The last volume, Many Mansions, is set in 1950, and is narrated through the mind of an 84 year old woman. Again the past is plundered, and again by a woman solitary. Now she is old and she explores her loneliness, the fact that she has never married, and the consequences of a child she bore out of wedlock and who is taken from her by Victorian custom. She has written a novel, and she rereads this novel while preparing to meet a young man she knows to give him 50 dollars. Through the course of the novel her life funnels into an isolation she accepts but is disturbed by. There is a climax, again somewhat melodramatic, but to me, that makes no difference for again it is the texture of memory, of the city, and of the sense both writer and protagonist bring to the crises that have shaped her life.
All three women are stoic in the face of horrendous loss. There is no self-pity in these pages even where there is great loss and pain. If anything, the pain of the narrators is something she is curious about, something that must be solved, and this individual pain is always contextualized by the events of the time, especially of the 30’s and the war. Her emotional vocabulary and her ability to convey feeling as well as a style that allows the story to hover above the plot like mist above a lake in extraordinary. In this sense I think John Williams’ Stoner is the book that comes closest to it both in method and mood, which places it in rare company.
I loved these books, wildly.
December 22, 2023
Three wonderful novellas from a tragically under-remembered author. It reminded me quite a lot of James but with a more modern twist. The descriptions of place were absolutely sublime with my second ever favourite description of Christmas (after (partisanly for me) Dylan Thomas’s Child’s Christmas), and although the descriptions often move beyond New York it is a real hymn to the city.
We are introduced to three different protagonists- women at different stages of life, and with stories that, although they often take the form of looking back at earlier (generally pretty elegiac) lives, pivot on moments that highlight the secrets, contradictions and often hypocrisies of families and relationships. These are a slow, languid read but very much worth it.
We are introduced to three different protagonists- women at different stages of life, and with stories that, although they often take the form of looking back at earlier (generally pretty elegiac) lives, pivot on moments that highlight the secrets, contradictions and often hypocrisies of families and relationships. These are a slow, languid read but very much worth it.
December 15, 2020
I have no idea how I discovered Isabel Bolton nor why I decided to buy this set of three novellas, but they are beautifully written and I wonder why so few people have heard of the author, (a nom-de-plume for Mary Britton Miller).
Of the three novellas, the most startling and compelling is "The Christmas Tree" set in the final months of 1945 and (most unusually for 1949, the year in which the novella was published) describes with empathy the beloved gay son of the main character, Mrs. Danforth, who is caring for her grandson in New York in the days before Christmas. Once I began reading this novella, I couldn't stop, and read and read until the [no spoilers] dramatic ending.
I was struck by two things in particular. Firstly Isabel Bolton published all three novels when she was in her sixties. (Many Mansions, the third novella in the series, was nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction in 1952.) Second, each novel is overshadowed by the horror of world war (the first and the second). In Many Mansions, the specter of the hydrogen bomb looms large, even meriting a few lyrical but grotesque lines of poetry:
"Molecules composed of two deuterons and a proton.
Two tritons, a deuteron and a proton,
A triton and a proton and a proton and a deuteron.
In one of these six possible combinations--
Triton--Triton-Triton, deuteron-triton--proton,
Or a possible combination of these three
Lies the secret of the triton bomb."
For some reason Isabel Bolton's novels sank into obscurity; they were revived in 1997 (when this edition was published) and then for some reason sank into obscurity for a second time. She deserves to have a wider readership.
Of the three novellas, the most startling and compelling is "The Christmas Tree" set in the final months of 1945 and (most unusually for 1949, the year in which the novella was published) describes with empathy the beloved gay son of the main character, Mrs. Danforth, who is caring for her grandson in New York in the days before Christmas. Once I began reading this novella, I couldn't stop, and read and read until the [no spoilers] dramatic ending.
I was struck by two things in particular. Firstly Isabel Bolton published all three novels when she was in her sixties. (Many Mansions, the third novella in the series, was nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction in 1952.) Second, each novel is overshadowed by the horror of world war (the first and the second). In Many Mansions, the specter of the hydrogen bomb looms large, even meriting a few lyrical but grotesque lines of poetry:
"Molecules composed of two deuterons and a proton.
Two tritons, a deuteron and a proton,
A triton and a proton and a proton and a deuteron.
In one of these six possible combinations--
Triton--Triton-Triton, deuteron-triton--proton,
Or a possible combination of these three
Lies the secret of the triton bomb."
For some reason Isabel Bolton's novels sank into obscurity; they were revived in 1997 (when this edition was published) and then for some reason sank into obscurity for a second time. She deserves to have a wider readership.
February 19, 2023
These three stories are character studies of people's relationship with their origins, with art, history and with each other. They are set in the environment of the nearly wealthy of New York City, between the years of the early 1940s to the early 50s. The first story covers the time and the mood of the USA as it approaches WWII, the second the aftermath of the atom bomb dropped on Japan and the resulting demobilsation, and the third is written at the time of second red scare with the subsequent development of the hydrogen bomb as a response. These are stories of ideas and emotions, explored through the intersection of the people being portrayed, showing their all too human strengths and weakensses, set against the backdrop of some of the most important years in American history.
December 26, 2021
I can't say enough good things about these three books. To read Ms Bolton's beautiful writng is to be back in NYC of the 1930s and 1940s. The author has an unusual style with long paragraphs of fluttering nouns that can't help but make you smile and sigh when you finish each one. "The Christmas Tree" is probably the most famous with its openly gay characters interacting in the confusing Christmas of 1945 withe WWII just ended but I enjoyed all three books equally. I would heartily recommend these books for anyone who has nostalgia for good writing and NYC.
November 23, 2022
Gorgeous, beautiful writing. Poignant and moving stories.
December 21, 2015
The prose is exquisite, but as I made my way through the first novella I found the author made almost no effort to clarify which character she was referring to at any one time or even the relationships among the characters. Lots of pronouns and you have to go back to find out precisely who she's talking about. It's like reading Joyce with goggles. I suggest you make a chart of characters as you read. It helps. I generally don't enjoy authors who create puzzles that seem to have no purpose. The author is too caught up in the deliciousness of her language to let you know what's going on.
Did Not Finish
October 13, 2025At 10 pages in, I already love this book, even though I barely understand what's going on. Having read Bolton's memoir of childhood, "Under Gemini," I'm enthralled with this author's original voice, and I'll follow wherever she leads. Will read it first by appreciating her dreamy storytelling and earthy language, and again later for understanding.
July 17, 2015
Possibly three and a half, if I'd read these some other time, or not all at once, or something, might even have been four. As it is, I can see why these are praised, but didn't entirely warm up to them.
August 6, 2011
Mary Britton Miller - name
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews