Albedo

by Chanda Grubbs

Chanda J. Grubbs’ debut novella, Albedo, is a book of mirrors. When Charlie, a young woman running from her past, meets Felix, an aged art dealer from San Francisco, she agrees to venture with him in search of the last great surrealist's final painting. The journey takes them across southern France, through history, buried family secrets, and love. Written in Charlie's startling vivid, lyrical voice, and refracted through Felix's letters to his wife, Albedo explores the honesty in deception and how each of us are reflections of our most distant, hidden selves.

118 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 25, 2015

Reviews

[jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charlie's house of dreams has the power of reflection.
When she dreams about Felix, he passes through her pain and return through it.
When she dreams about Adella, she traverses her past and loses herself in total blackness.
But when she dreams about Antoinette, she diffuses across her selves and radiates at each octave.

[Sue Bridehead (A Pseudonym) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, lyrical, weird novella where the POVs shift fluidly mid-chapter and you're disoriented and refracted and not entirely sure who the "she" and "you" are. I do like this sort of story, though. Trauma narratives seem to take this form often, where a character starts out in chaos and gradually makes their way toward acceptance, in the process of revealing, at the end, the terrible thing they've been hiding from us all along. In that sense, this novella could go on a shelf next to Amelia Gray's Threats or Vendela Vida's books, or even the more traditionally-told The Pleasing Hour by Lily King, or Ultraluminous by Katherine Faw. Characters that are hiding from something and from themselves--always a rich theme.

[Calley · Rating 3 out of 5]

There a lot of beautiful, well-crafted images and moments in this book, though there were times when I felt this was more like an album and less like a "story". The skill in the writing is undeniable, but I just wish I had a little more to hold on to as I learned about how the characters interacted with each other. Part II was very unexpected for me, which I think was intentional, but it was so out-of-left-field that I almost felt like it didn't make sense to the character. Certainly worth a thought-provoking read.