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Pickle's Progress
Marcia Butler’s debut novel, Pickle’s Progress, is a fierce, mordant New York story about the twisted path to love.
Over the course of five weeks, identical twin brothers, one wife, a dog, and a bereaved young woman collide against each other to hilarious and sometimes horrifying effect. Everything is questioned and tested as they jockey for position and try to maintain the status quo. Love is the poison, the antidote, the devil and, ultimately, the hero.
Over the course of five weeks, identical twin brothers, one wife, a dog, and a bereaved young woman collide against each other to hilarious and sometimes horrifying effect. Everything is questioned and tested as they jockey for position and try to maintain the status quo. Love is the poison, the antidote, the devil and, ultimately, the hero.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2019
10 people are currently reading
261 people want to read
About the author
Marcia Butler
5 books80 followersMarcia Butler’s nationally acclaimed memoir, The Skin Above My Knee, was one of the Washington Post’s “Top ten noteworthy moments in classical music in 2017”. Her debut novel, Pickle’s Progress, was hailed by Michael Schaub of NPR: “Surprising and audacious, Pickle’s Progress succeeds because of Butler’s willingness to take risks and her considerable charisma. She’s a gifted storyteller with a uniquely dry sense of humor and a real sympathy for her characters.” And Richard Russo said: "The four main characters in Pickle's Progress seems more alive than most of the people we know in real life because their fears and desires are so nakedly exposed." Her third book, Oslo, Maine, draws on indelible memories of performing for many years at a chamber music festival in central Maine. While there, Marcia came to love the majestic moose who roam at their perpetual peril among the humans. Bethanne Patrick of Literary Hub noted, “The author’s deep compassion for a different species means that you will wonder why more writers don’t choose to include all manner of beasts in their narratives.” In her stunning new novel (5/6/25) Dear Virginia, Wait For Me, Marcia draws a sensitive portrait of a not quite formed, vulnerable yet resilient, young woman who, with the help of her inner voice who she believes is Virginia Woolf, attempts to overcome the psychological damages wrought by her troubled upbringing. Best-selling author, Jonathan Lee, writes: “Her protagonist believes she's being guided by the voice of Virginia Woolf, but it is Butler's voice -- comforting and astute, alive to the music of kindness as well as betrayal -- that holds you to the end.”
Prior to becoming an author, Marcia had several creative careers: professional musician, interior designer, and documentary filmmaker. During her thirty-year musical career, she performed as a principal oboist and soloist on the most renowned of New York and international stages, with many high-profile musicians and orchestras – including pianist Andre Watts and composer/pianist Keith Jarrett. The New York Times hailed her as a “first rate artist”. Her interior design projects have been published in numerous shelter magazines and range up and down the East Coast, from Boston to NYC to Miami. The Creative Imperative, her documentary film exploring the essence of creativity, premiered in 2019 at The New York Society Library and is now available on YouTube.
Marcia’s writing has been published in The Washington Post, Literary Hub, PANK Magazine, Psychology Today, Aspen Ideas Magazine, Catapult, Bio-Stories, Kenyon Review, and others. She was a 2015 recipient of a Writer-in-Residence through Aspen Words and the Catto Shaw Foundation and was a writing fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 2018 and 2019. After four decades in New York City, Marcia now calls New Mexico home.
Prior to becoming an author, Marcia had several creative careers: professional musician, interior designer, and documentary filmmaker. During her thirty-year musical career, she performed as a principal oboist and soloist on the most renowned of New York and international stages, with many high-profile musicians and orchestras – including pianist Andre Watts and composer/pianist Keith Jarrett. The New York Times hailed her as a “first rate artist”. Her interior design projects have been published in numerous shelter magazines and range up and down the East Coast, from Boston to NYC to Miami. The Creative Imperative, her documentary film exploring the essence of creativity, premiered in 2019 at The New York Society Library and is now available on YouTube.
Marcia’s writing has been published in The Washington Post, Literary Hub, PANK Magazine, Psychology Today, Aspen Ideas Magazine, Catapult, Bio-Stories, Kenyon Review, and others. She was a 2015 recipient of a Writer-in-Residence through Aspen Words and the Catto Shaw Foundation and was a writing fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 2018 and 2019. After four decades in New York City, Marcia now calls New Mexico home.
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June 16, 2020
The opening scene is an attention grabber. Manhattan based architects Karen and Stan are returning home from a party in the early hours of the morning, they’ve drunk too much (as is their habit) and they’re bickering (as is also their habit). As they cross the George Washington Bridge their attention is seized by a woman standing in the road, causing them to crash their car into the roadside barrier. They soon learn that the girl is called Junie and that her boyfriend has just jumped over the side of the bridge, fulfilling his commitment to what was, in fact, a joint suicide pact. The couple call out Stan’s twin brother, Pickle, who happens to live in an apartment that looks right onto the bridge. Pickle is a cop, surely he’ll be able to take control of this and sort things out.
We’ve now met all of the key characters in this book – in fact these four are pretty much the focus of everything here. Oh, not forgetting Karen and Stan’s dog Doodles. Stan and Pickle are identical twins who have always been impossible to tell apart and this has remained the case even to this point in their lives. Pickle is often gruff and direct and is haunted by the fact that as the second born he felt unwanted by their manipulative mother, whereas Stan is jumpy and fraught with obsessive-compulsive behaviour. Karen is a little harder to read, she’s clearly naggy and bossy but there’s more to her than this and it takes some time to discover what lurks beneath, and why. Junie is quiet and obviously damaged – it’s not clear if she can move on and get past this grim episode.
The four become embroiled in a complex set of relationships which on the face of it seem unlikely (even unbelievable) but which by the end seem possible or even inevitable. There were times early on where I though some of the interactions were trite, the conversations not quite ringing true for me, but these were relatively few and as the story slowly swallowed me up I felt vaguely guilty for even thinking this. For me this is a book that starts well, drops off for a while and then gets stronger and stronger. By half-way I was pretty much hooked and not long after I was turning pages with a sense of trepidation but also with an element of optimistic anticipation of what was to come next. The story played with my emotions from one page to the next.
As tale of New York life – it’s hard for me to imagine this playing out in a sleepy small town – and of people with mixed up thoughts brought about by the sheer trauma of living the lives they have I think it really hits the mark. It’s sometimes happy but more often sad and it kept me guessing about how the issues besieging this foursome could or would be resolved. And I liked the fact that all the answers are not provided, just enough for readers to make up their own minds as to what happens next.
A four-star beginning followed by a three-star middle and a five-star ending. My dodgy arithmetic awards it four and a half stars (rounded down to four). But I’ll need to think on that for a while as if this book haunts me like I think it might then five stars might just be the right award.
My sincere thanks to Central Avenue Publishing and Netgalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
We’ve now met all of the key characters in this book – in fact these four are pretty much the focus of everything here. Oh, not forgetting Karen and Stan’s dog Doodles. Stan and Pickle are identical twins who have always been impossible to tell apart and this has remained the case even to this point in their lives. Pickle is often gruff and direct and is haunted by the fact that as the second born he felt unwanted by their manipulative mother, whereas Stan is jumpy and fraught with obsessive-compulsive behaviour. Karen is a little harder to read, she’s clearly naggy and bossy but there’s more to her than this and it takes some time to discover what lurks beneath, and why. Junie is quiet and obviously damaged – it’s not clear if she can move on and get past this grim episode.
The four become embroiled in a complex set of relationships which on the face of it seem unlikely (even unbelievable) but which by the end seem possible or even inevitable. There were times early on where I though some of the interactions were trite, the conversations not quite ringing true for me, but these were relatively few and as the story slowly swallowed me up I felt vaguely guilty for even thinking this. For me this is a book that starts well, drops off for a while and then gets stronger and stronger. By half-way I was pretty much hooked and not long after I was turning pages with a sense of trepidation but also with an element of optimistic anticipation of what was to come next. The story played with my emotions from one page to the next.
As tale of New York life – it’s hard for me to imagine this playing out in a sleepy small town – and of people with mixed up thoughts brought about by the sheer trauma of living the lives they have I think it really hits the mark. It’s sometimes happy but more often sad and it kept me guessing about how the issues besieging this foursome could or would be resolved. And I liked the fact that all the answers are not provided, just enough for readers to make up their own minds as to what happens next.
A four-star beginning followed by a three-star middle and a five-star ending. My dodgy arithmetic awards it four and a half stars (rounded down to four). But I’ll need to think on that for a while as if this book haunts me like I think it might then five stars might just be the right award.
My sincere thanks to Central Avenue Publishing and Netgalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
November 9, 2018
The book that went phhht.
One likes to give a debut novelist every chance and, to be fair, this starts promisingly enough. Manhattan power couple, Stan and Karen, are driving back across the George Washington Bridge late one night when they narrowly miss crashing into a wailing young woman in the road. Her boyfriend has jumped off the bridge. They call Stan’s twin brother Pickle, a cop, to rescue them from the situation and suppress the fact that Stan was drunk driving (it’s not the first time Pickle’s dug them out of a booze-bottle-shape hole). Karen invites the girl to stay at their home to recover from the trauma. Junie is a slender freckled wraith with a cloud of red hair. Pickle takes one look at her and falls in love.
So the stage is set for some potentially interesting dynamics. But then, at about the halfway point, Marcia Butler seems to run out of steam. The zippy New York dialogue turns clunky. Exposition rears its ugly head. Flashbacks are clumsily shoe-horned in. The relationship between the identical twins Stan and Pickle becomes increasingly unbelievable. Karen’s actions grow less and less likely. And catalyst Junie fizzles out like a fused Osram. It’s almost as if the author had put all her effort into setting up her mise-en-scène and her characters and then became immensely bored with them all. The reader feels much the same way.
My thanks to Central Avenue Publishing for the review copy courtesy of NetGalley.
One likes to give a debut novelist every chance and, to be fair, this starts promisingly enough. Manhattan power couple, Stan and Karen, are driving back across the George Washington Bridge late one night when they narrowly miss crashing into a wailing young woman in the road. Her boyfriend has jumped off the bridge. They call Stan’s twin brother Pickle, a cop, to rescue them from the situation and suppress the fact that Stan was drunk driving (it’s not the first time Pickle’s dug them out of a booze-bottle-shape hole). Karen invites the girl to stay at their home to recover from the trauma. Junie is a slender freckled wraith with a cloud of red hair. Pickle takes one look at her and falls in love.
So the stage is set for some potentially interesting dynamics. But then, at about the halfway point, Marcia Butler seems to run out of steam. The zippy New York dialogue turns clunky. Exposition rears its ugly head. Flashbacks are clumsily shoe-horned in. The relationship between the identical twins Stan and Pickle becomes increasingly unbelievable. Karen’s actions grow less and less likely. And catalyst Junie fizzles out like a fused Osram. It’s almost as if the author had put all her effort into setting up her mise-en-scène and her characters and then became immensely bored with them all. The reader feels much the same way.
My thanks to Central Avenue Publishing for the review copy courtesy of NetGalley.
August 27, 2019
This book starts with a girl on a bridge. A man has jumped. Stan and his wife, Karen, both in a drunken state, almost hit her, and in doing so, their lives change. They call Stan’s twin brother, Pickle, a policeman, to get them out of trouble. They take the girl, Junie, into their home. They try to stop drinking. Pickle decides to pursue a romance with Junie, even though she has just experienced a major trauma. It also contains an awkward love triangle. The characters’ backstories are imparted through flashbacks.
This story sets a new bar for unlikeable characters, though I did like the dog. I can deal with unlikeable characters if there is some underlying thought-provoking message, but I didn’t find such a message here. The usual contemporary sensationalistic themes are included: vulgarity, graphic sex, drugs, psychopathic behavior, infidelity, greed, control, abuse, and disturbing childhood memories. I usually like character studies, but this one tries to tackle too many dysfunctions, and, in the end, I didn’t feel did a good job with any of them. The attributes discussed in relation to suicide were particularly ill-informed and distasteful to me. It will likely engender strong feelings of either like or dislike.
I received an advance reader’s copy from the publisher via NetGalley. It is scheduled to be published on April 9, 2019.
This story sets a new bar for unlikeable characters, though I did like the dog. I can deal with unlikeable characters if there is some underlying thought-provoking message, but I didn’t find such a message here. The usual contemporary sensationalistic themes are included: vulgarity, graphic sex, drugs, psychopathic behavior, infidelity, greed, control, abuse, and disturbing childhood memories. I usually like character studies, but this one tries to tackle too many dysfunctions, and, in the end, I didn’t feel did a good job with any of them. The attributes discussed in relation to suicide were particularly ill-informed and distasteful to me. It will likely engender strong feelings of either like or dislike.
I received an advance reader’s copy from the publisher via NetGalley. It is scheduled to be published on April 9, 2019.
March 16, 2019
Out April 9th! Preorder at Amazon here!
Thank you to Marcia Butler for being so sweet many months ago and offering me an opportunity to review this book! And also for mailing me her autograph! I always love to connect with new authors, and while Marcia is not new to the art scene, this is her debut novel.
Pickle's Progress is about four people, all with their own struggles, just trying to make it through life in New York City. Stan and his wife Karen are struggling in their marriage. Pickle is Stan's twin brother and has forever been the black sheep/lesser loved child of their mother. Junie is the bystander of a car crash on the George Washington bridge caused by drunken Stan and Karen, and Junie's boyfriend just happens to have jumped to his death off the side. All four of them are connected in their own twisted way, and we will find out if there is a happy ending for any of them by the time the last few pages roll around.
I honestly kind of struggled with this book. While I really appreciated the book conceptually and understood where Marcia Butler was trying to go, the plot ebbed and flowed for me. There were times when I was fully invested, and other times when I found my interest wavering. The one thing that I found super distracting which could have impacted my investment in the story is the dialogue. The dialogue did not feel authentic at all. It felt very scripted and, in my opinion, kept the book from feeling realistic and relatable.
I also had a hard time with some of the decisions that the characters made throughout the book. For example, after the car crash, Junie is invited by Karen and Stan to stay in their home as she recovers from witnessing the traumatic suicide of her boyfriend. I had a really hard time believing that a real person would move in with a pair of drunken strangers without question.
If Marcia Butler was going for completely unlikable characters, she hit the nail out of the park though (and my impression was that was the direction she was trying to go). I could not stand any of the main characters. They all had horrible qualities and character flaws that made them completely despicable. Butler certainly accomplished the development of uniquely defined characters that I think will ignite some passion and emotion for any reader... good or bad (which is something I think any author should strive for).
Overall, while this wasn't my favorite book of all time, it did have some redeeming qualities. While there were highs and lows, as a complete package it was just okay. But don't take my word for it. Read it for yourself and tell me what you think!
-I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Marcia Butler, and Central Avenue Publishing for the opportunity to review.-
Thank you to Marcia Butler for being so sweet many months ago and offering me an opportunity to review this book! And also for mailing me her autograph! I always love to connect with new authors, and while Marcia is not new to the art scene, this is her debut novel.
Pickle's Progress is about four people, all with their own struggles, just trying to make it through life in New York City. Stan and his wife Karen are struggling in their marriage. Pickle is Stan's twin brother and has forever been the black sheep/lesser loved child of their mother. Junie is the bystander of a car crash on the George Washington bridge caused by drunken Stan and Karen, and Junie's boyfriend just happens to have jumped to his death off the side. All four of them are connected in their own twisted way, and we will find out if there is a happy ending for any of them by the time the last few pages roll around.
I honestly kind of struggled with this book. While I really appreciated the book conceptually and understood where Marcia Butler was trying to go, the plot ebbed and flowed for me. There were times when I was fully invested, and other times when I found my interest wavering. The one thing that I found super distracting which could have impacted my investment in the story is the dialogue. The dialogue did not feel authentic at all. It felt very scripted and, in my opinion, kept the book from feeling realistic and relatable.
I also had a hard time with some of the decisions that the characters made throughout the book. For example, after the car crash, Junie is invited by Karen and Stan to stay in their home as she recovers from witnessing the traumatic suicide of her boyfriend. I had a really hard time believing that a real person would move in with a pair of drunken strangers without question.
If Marcia Butler was going for completely unlikable characters, she hit the nail out of the park though (and my impression was that was the direction she was trying to go). I could not stand any of the main characters. They all had horrible qualities and character flaws that made them completely despicable. Butler certainly accomplished the development of uniquely defined characters that I think will ignite some passion and emotion for any reader... good or bad (which is something I think any author should strive for).
Overall, while this wasn't my favorite book of all time, it did have some redeeming qualities. While there were highs and lows, as a complete package it was just okay. But don't take my word for it. Read it for yourself and tell me what you think!
-I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Marcia Butler, and Central Avenue Publishing for the opportunity to review.-
May 20, 2019
Pickle’s Progress is a quintessential modern New York City novel. In it, Marcia Butler gives us identical twin brothers and the women in their lives. But it’s much more dysfunctional and convoluted than that. Fundamentally, that’s a good thing. Butler’s taut writing style connects these people to their city and adds a hearty dose of black humor.
Stan and Pickle McArdle take sibling rivalries to an skyscraper level. As twins, they’ve been compared for every second of their lives. First it was their mother, then Stan’s wife Karen. But truthfully, everyone in their orbit finds them impossible to tell apart, and yet radically different in personality. To start, Stan is an architect and Pickle is a cop. Who’s ever heard of a cop called Pickle? Wanting that answer alone drove me to read more.
In the opening pages, the three family members end up at the scene of a planned double suicide jump from the George Washington Bridge. Except only one person jumped. The other person is Junie, who unintentionally upends everyone’s life. Karen invites Junie to stay with her and Stan. The couple is also recovering from the injuries sustained when their car crashed on the bridge. Plus, they were roaring drunk, so Pickle arrives to fix the scene from a police perspective.
As the story progresses, Pickle pushes his brother and sister-in-law to honor their agreement about renovations on the brownstone they co-own. He’d like to move in, since he owns half of it. What seem like small events in the beginning are just a mask for the underlying story, which starts to become clear about midway through the novel. Then Butler starts throwing curve balls. She only stops on the last page.
My conclusions
Pickle’s Progress isn’t an epic. It isn’t filled with a large cast of characters, and its primary timeline isn’t long. At its heart are Pickle, Stan, Karen, and Junie. It’s about their relationships, pure and simple. Except when it isn’t simple, which is pretty much always.
Pickle’s Progress doesn’t break your heart into tiny pieces. But Butler pulls heartstrings just the same. And as soon as she builds sympathy for a character, she reveals something that changes your mind. Over and over.
Listening to Butler speak about the book at the 2019 Gaithersburg Book Festival, it’s clear this is a love letter to her city. She’s included some of her favorite places, some of which are iconic while others are more obscure.
Through her characters, she also shows us that relationships are like cities—there’s always a dark underbelly. The tourist spots might be bright and shiny, but head to where real people live and it’s grittier. Like traveling, we can only be tourists in another person’s relationship.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to NetGalley, Central Avenue Publishing, and the author for the digital ARC in exchange for this honest review.
Published originally (with additional content) on my book blog, TheBibliophage.com.
Stan and Pickle McArdle take sibling rivalries to an skyscraper level. As twins, they’ve been compared for every second of their lives. First it was their mother, then Stan’s wife Karen. But truthfully, everyone in their orbit finds them impossible to tell apart, and yet radically different in personality. To start, Stan is an architect and Pickle is a cop. Who’s ever heard of a cop called Pickle? Wanting that answer alone drove me to read more.
In the opening pages, the three family members end up at the scene of a planned double suicide jump from the George Washington Bridge. Except only one person jumped. The other person is Junie, who unintentionally upends everyone’s life. Karen invites Junie to stay with her and Stan. The couple is also recovering from the injuries sustained when their car crashed on the bridge. Plus, they were roaring drunk, so Pickle arrives to fix the scene from a police perspective.
As the story progresses, Pickle pushes his brother and sister-in-law to honor their agreement about renovations on the brownstone they co-own. He’d like to move in, since he owns half of it. What seem like small events in the beginning are just a mask for the underlying story, which starts to become clear about midway through the novel. Then Butler starts throwing curve balls. She only stops on the last page.
My conclusions
Pickle’s Progress isn’t an epic. It isn’t filled with a large cast of characters, and its primary timeline isn’t long. At its heart are Pickle, Stan, Karen, and Junie. It’s about their relationships, pure and simple. Except when it isn’t simple, which is pretty much always.
Pickle’s Progress doesn’t break your heart into tiny pieces. But Butler pulls heartstrings just the same. And as soon as she builds sympathy for a character, she reveals something that changes your mind. Over and over.
Listening to Butler speak about the book at the 2019 Gaithersburg Book Festival, it’s clear this is a love letter to her city. She’s included some of her favorite places, some of which are iconic while others are more obscure.
Through her characters, she also shows us that relationships are like cities—there’s always a dark underbelly. The tourist spots might be bright and shiny, but head to where real people live and it’s grittier. Like traveling, we can only be tourists in another person’s relationship.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to NetGalley, Central Avenue Publishing, and the author for the digital ARC in exchange for this honest review.
Published originally (with additional content) on my book blog, TheBibliophage.com.
February 14, 2019
I find it intriguing when there is such disparity in a book's ratings, and given that this is a debut endeavor, am prone to cut slack on content and style. However, I should have paid more attention to the nay-sayers and left it alone. The strong beginning indicates the author has good ideas, but the execution doesn't pan out, with cookie cutter situations, characters, and terrible dialogue. New York City itself provides the most interesting passages. There are observations that could only be made by a resident, and those parts of the book rang true, leading me to be willing to give her another chance with future works.
December 7, 2018
Oh New York. What a sh*tty city to live in, what a great setting for a story. It’s inexplicable, really, how this noisy obscenely expensive overcommercialized overrated place creates such compelling tales, expect to blame it on the extreme conditions that being in NY presents. But actually I didn’t just select this book for its setting, it was also the title. Not just because it featured an alliteration (of which I’m so fond), but it just seemed interesting. Pickle is in fact a grown man, a NYPD cop no less, who managed to get through decades with that absurd moniker, a childhood aberration of his given name. His twin brother and their mother’s favorite survived his early years as a much more conventional Stan. Stan and Pickle are identical in appearance and very different in most other respects, expect possibly their taste in women. That explains the bizarre love triangle in which Stan, Pickle and Stan’s wife Karen are locked and have been for years. When their triangle inadvertently becomes a square after Karen takes in a stranger, the dynamics are all thrown off. Things are suddenly changing, Pickle is getting more demanding of his fair share of their brownstone investment property, Karen and Stan aren’t drinking (something they were doing very enthusiastically and regularly until now). Reluctantly and apprehensively progress will be made. And not just by Pickle. So this is essentially a relationship book, possibly even described as a very unconventional love story. A character driven drama with a very enjoyable and very dark humorous undertones. A surprisingly compelling and enjoyable read despite the lack of likeable (or at least conventionally likeable) characters. In fact this mismatched quartet and everyone in it with their private obsessions and questionable motivations are very much a mess, but an interesting one to behold. The writing definitely helped, it was amusing in just the right way. This book got much acclaim from some very respected and respectable sources and for me it lived up to the praise. Very auspicious for a fictional debut too. Thanks Netgalley.
March 13, 2019
Holy moly what a gut punch of a book. I don't think I have ever read anything quite like Marcia Butler's "Pickle's Progress." The 4 characters, contemporary New Yorkers who are both endearing and revolting, are some of the most heart-wrenching and intricate characters I've ever come across. The story is a roller coaster, and words are so raw it will truly feel like you are right there feeling the emotions and the pain, and sometimes even the humor. I feel like this will go down as one of the truly great New York novels, and cannot wait to read more from Butler.
March 2, 2019
I received a copy of this book through NetGalley and Central Avenue Publishing in exchange for an honest and original review.
This book basically goes through every possible reason for a reviewer to say "trigger warning" and ticks every box - sexual assault, sexual abuse, alcoholism, physical abuse, emotional abuse, drug use, OCD and mental health issues, child abuse, crooked cops, and even some slight racism.
It's a hot mess.
A more in-depth review will be posted on my blog closer to publication date. Probably. If I can't critique it without going on a rant, I'll leave it at being a (barely) two star book for me.
This book basically goes through every possible reason for a reviewer to say "trigger warning" and ticks every box - sexual assault, sexual abuse, alcoholism, physical abuse, emotional abuse, drug use, OCD and mental health issues, child abuse, crooked cops, and even some slight racism.
It's a hot mess.
A more in-depth review will be posted on my blog closer to publication date. Probably. If I can't critique it without going on a rant, I'll leave it at being a (barely) two star book for me.
October 6, 2018
This is a weird, fierce, wonderfully written story. A beautiful woman with issues, who loves one identical twin but is married to the other, finds her life upended after rescuing a woman whose partner just jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge.
January 13, 2019
Pickles Progress by Marcia Butler a four-star read that will pickle you. This could have been a five-star read if it kept going the way it started, but sadly it drifted off and foundered for the second half, I nearly gave it a three-star, but the first half pushed it over. Stan and Pickle and their whole family are just crazy, so crazy that it almost comes back to normal. If you like your fiction over the top with a side of crazy then you need this story in your life, its crazy and passionate and crazy again, but if you stick with it hopefully you will enjoy it.
March 28, 2019
Linda’s Book Obsession Reviews “Pickles’s Progress” by Marcia Butler, Central Avenue Publishing, April 9, 2019
Marcia Butler, Author of “Pickle’s Progress” has written an unusual, unique perspective about life and love. The Genres of “Pickle’s Progress” are Fiction, Women’s Fiction, Dry Wit, and some Satire. The story takes place mostly in the New York and surrounding areas. The author describes the four characters as complicated, complex, unlikable at times, dysfunctional, quirky, and strange. My favorite character is the dog.(the fifth character if that counts)
The characters are two identical twin brothers, Pickles and Stan and Stan’s wife and a young woman who has had a tragic loss. Stan and his wife are living in their part of a Brownstone house, that they purchased with Pickles. The grieving woman is living in Stan’s finished basement. Pickles want to have his part of the house finished so he can move in. The interaction between all of the characters is almost like a game of chess in certain ways. There are betrayals, unpredictable actions, and a twisted plot.
The ending is a big surprise! I appreciate that Marcia Butler has written a thought-provoking unique story about love and life . I would recommend this book for those readers who enjoy an unusual novel that leaves you thinking.
Marcia Butler, Author of “Pickle’s Progress” has written an unusual, unique perspective about life and love. The Genres of “Pickle’s Progress” are Fiction, Women’s Fiction, Dry Wit, and some Satire. The story takes place mostly in the New York and surrounding areas. The author describes the four characters as complicated, complex, unlikable at times, dysfunctional, quirky, and strange. My favorite character is the dog.(the fifth character if that counts)
The characters are two identical twin brothers, Pickles and Stan and Stan’s wife and a young woman who has had a tragic loss. Stan and his wife are living in their part of a Brownstone house, that they purchased with Pickles. The grieving woman is living in Stan’s finished basement. Pickles want to have his part of the house finished so he can move in. The interaction between all of the characters is almost like a game of chess in certain ways. There are betrayals, unpredictable actions, and a twisted plot.
The ending is a big surprise! I appreciate that Marcia Butler has written a thought-provoking unique story about love and life . I would recommend this book for those readers who enjoy an unusual novel that leaves you thinking.
January 10, 2019
via my blog: https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
'A worm in Pickle’s brain told him this was reasoning he should bite on. Everyone was entitled to a breakdown or a breakthrough, and if he were honest with himself, Pickle wasn’t sure which he were facing.'
What did I just read? Twin brothers Stan and Pickle McArdle are just as connected, though grown men, as they were in their toxic mother’s womb. They don’t live together anymore, which is a bit inconvenient for Pickle and Karen, but when Karen and her husband Stan get in an accident intoxicated out of their minds (a common occurence) a mixed up young woman named Junie becomes a strange catalyst for some serious sibling rivalry. Does it count as sibling rivalry if you’re unaware of it (Stan)? Is this entanglement a New York thing, kidding… It’s handy that Stan’s brother is on the police force, Pickle always comes through and cleans up their messes. This time the mess is coming home with Stan and Karen, Junie “a woman standing directly in front of them, perhaps five hundred yards away, with her hands at the side of her face, mouth open, like the Edvard Munch painting”, the reason for the accident. Boyfriend Jacob jumped off the bridge, but she didn’t follow. That’s the problem with pacts, someone often opts out after you’ve already committed, or chooses to do it without you. June is Pickle’s favorite month, could love be on the rise? Karen’s reasons for helping out a stranger in dire need of support begins to make sense as she befriends Junie, who feels like a freeloader. Stan isn’t thrilled about the young woman living in their brownstone, his nature is ‘odd’ but Karen seems more overbearing mother than wife.
Pickle, cleaned up all nice, takes in interest in Junie while also making demands on Karen, and what a deceptive piece our Karen is. Secrets, betrayals and at the heart of it all it began with a mother who chose one twin as her favorite. I kept having to remind myself this was written by a woman, Pickle has plenty of reasons for his rage towards Karen, his envy toward his brother, resentment too but I didn’t feel there was a woman’s voice, isn’t that odd? We’re meant to have empathy for Karen, but in my mind her arm didn’t take much twisting and certainly she isn’t as smart as she plays up when there are a million ways she could have handled everything. I know, it makes no sense until you read, but I refuse to post spoilers. Junie is this mess that could have been a hell of a character but instead spends more time in retreat.
I hate you, I love you would be the perfect summary for what is going on between all the major players. Karen has the perfect setup, she has Pickle right where she wants him but he isn’t playing her game anymore. Her control is dimishing. It’s that ‘breakdown’ or ‘breakthrough’ thing racing through Pickle’s veins, plans swirling through his mind that won’t allow him to live in shackles anymore, funny for a cop, how captive he’s allowed himself to be. Junie, despite Stan’s resistance, could be an antidote to all his misery. Stan is the most believable character, his artlessness, his lack of self-awareness, it’s obvious he doesn’t slip out of his own mind enough to wonder at everything happening all around him. It’s hard to hate him, there’s something childlike about him. The twins are wildly different, Pickle is abrasive where Stan is diluted in his ‘masculinity’ so to speak. Which unraveling Stan makes it easy to understand why their twisted mother favored him, if she had a bone in her body of maternal love, which is doubtful, it’s possible there was fear he would be lost on his own. Junie, I don’t know, she was more a presence than a character I could connect with. Pickle and Karen, those two are absolutely their own problem and each other’s. I just could not like either of them. I still don’t have a clue who Junie is, to be honest. I keep going back to her angry because she should have blazed brighter with such a wild start.
The ending, maybe a little too neat for me. I mean, all’s well that ends well, really? I want to witness the confrontations, you’re telling me everything just lines up? Who are these people?
Publication Date: April 9, 2019
Central Avenue Publishing
'A worm in Pickle’s brain told him this was reasoning he should bite on. Everyone was entitled to a breakdown or a breakthrough, and if he were honest with himself, Pickle wasn’t sure which he were facing.'
What did I just read? Twin brothers Stan and Pickle McArdle are just as connected, though grown men, as they were in their toxic mother’s womb. They don’t live together anymore, which is a bit inconvenient for Pickle and Karen, but when Karen and her husband Stan get in an accident intoxicated out of their minds (a common occurence) a mixed up young woman named Junie becomes a strange catalyst for some serious sibling rivalry. Does it count as sibling rivalry if you’re unaware of it (Stan)? Is this entanglement a New York thing, kidding… It’s handy that Stan’s brother is on the police force, Pickle always comes through and cleans up their messes. This time the mess is coming home with Stan and Karen, Junie “a woman standing directly in front of them, perhaps five hundred yards away, with her hands at the side of her face, mouth open, like the Edvard Munch painting”, the reason for the accident. Boyfriend Jacob jumped off the bridge, but she didn’t follow. That’s the problem with pacts, someone often opts out after you’ve already committed, or chooses to do it without you. June is Pickle’s favorite month, could love be on the rise? Karen’s reasons for helping out a stranger in dire need of support begins to make sense as she befriends Junie, who feels like a freeloader. Stan isn’t thrilled about the young woman living in their brownstone, his nature is ‘odd’ but Karen seems more overbearing mother than wife.
Pickle, cleaned up all nice, takes in interest in Junie while also making demands on Karen, and what a deceptive piece our Karen is. Secrets, betrayals and at the heart of it all it began with a mother who chose one twin as her favorite. I kept having to remind myself this was written by a woman, Pickle has plenty of reasons for his rage towards Karen, his envy toward his brother, resentment too but I didn’t feel there was a woman’s voice, isn’t that odd? We’re meant to have empathy for Karen, but in my mind her arm didn’t take much twisting and certainly she isn’t as smart as she plays up when there are a million ways she could have handled everything. I know, it makes no sense until you read, but I refuse to post spoilers. Junie is this mess that could have been a hell of a character but instead spends more time in retreat.
I hate you, I love you would be the perfect summary for what is going on between all the major players. Karen has the perfect setup, she has Pickle right where she wants him but he isn’t playing her game anymore. Her control is dimishing. It’s that ‘breakdown’ or ‘breakthrough’ thing racing through Pickle’s veins, plans swirling through his mind that won’t allow him to live in shackles anymore, funny for a cop, how captive he’s allowed himself to be. Junie, despite Stan’s resistance, could be an antidote to all his misery. Stan is the most believable character, his artlessness, his lack of self-awareness, it’s obvious he doesn’t slip out of his own mind enough to wonder at everything happening all around him. It’s hard to hate him, there’s something childlike about him. The twins are wildly different, Pickle is abrasive where Stan is diluted in his ‘masculinity’ so to speak. Which unraveling Stan makes it easy to understand why their twisted mother favored him, if she had a bone in her body of maternal love, which is doubtful, it’s possible there was fear he would be lost on his own. Junie, I don’t know, she was more a presence than a character I could connect with. Pickle and Karen, those two are absolutely their own problem and each other’s. I just could not like either of them. I still don’t have a clue who Junie is, to be honest. I keep going back to her angry because she should have blazed brighter with such a wild start.
The ending, maybe a little too neat for me. I mean, all’s well that ends well, really? I want to witness the confrontations, you’re telling me everything just lines up? Who are these people?
Publication Date: April 9, 2019
Central Avenue Publishing
January 7, 2019
The start was great -- bitchy New Yorkers drunk driving, getting bailed out by the cop brother, a suicide and some great stage-setting of the City that Never Sleeps. And then...what? The entire plot was based on many decisions/plot points that didn't make sense and were increasingly implausible. "Let's just move this random stranger into our basement!" "I'm the random stranger and I'm completely comfortable with this! I don't have any questions about what my role is and why these utter strangers have decided to adopt me as a charity case!"
The characters had weird, un-fleshed-out quirks (Karen eating dirt?? Pickle with the damn breath spray) and were ALL detestable. Pickle is a piece of shit ("Progress" my ass. He didn't learn anything. Zero growth. Still a fucking piece of shit). Stan was a neurotic pain in the ass. Karen is a supreme bitch. Junie is a sad sack. The dialogue started off snappy but became SO clunky and stilted by the end.
SPOILERS
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Don't even get me started on the whole Pickle/Stan/Karen love triangle. How does any of that make sense at all? How could they possibly hide that affair for the entirety of the marriage? How can Pickle be content being the side piece? What kind of insane mother would sell out her son? What kind of detestable bitch piece of shit would acquiesce?
The characters had weird, un-fleshed-out quirks (Karen eating dirt?? Pickle with the damn breath spray) and were ALL detestable. Pickle is a piece of shit ("Progress" my ass. He didn't learn anything. Zero growth. Still a fucking piece of shit). Stan was a neurotic pain in the ass. Karen is a supreme bitch. Junie is a sad sack. The dialogue started off snappy but became SO clunky and stilted by the end.
SPOILERS
----------------
Don't even get me started on the whole Pickle/Stan/Karen love triangle. How does any of that make sense at all? How could they possibly hide that affair for the entirety of the marriage? How can Pickle be content being the side piece? What kind of insane mother would sell out her son? What kind of detestable bitch piece of shit would acquiesce?
January 5, 2019
I was quite looking forward to reading this book based on the blurb. In fact it is such a different kind of book, that immediately I was pulled into the writing. There is a different feel to it than most contemporary fiction today. With that said, the characters are all appallingly unlikable, which is okay, and can be fascinating at times. However, there was nothing redeeming about this story at all. The people are so unlikable, you just don't care about them after a while. Kind of over the top writing in every extreme, these characters all seemed borderline crazy and barely able to function. Maybe that was the point. With not much of a plot to delve into, there was nothing revealing about the book, and it just kind of went on and on. I really wanted to like this book, but gave up about half way through. Thanks to Netgalley for an advance reader copy.
May 18, 2019
First off, this surprised me that this was a debut novel as the writing is highly accomplished. The scene is set when Stan and his wife Karen drink-driving home from a party knock over a woman whom they take in and Stan's identical twin brother Pickle becomes enamored of. This could have be considered satire, as Stan and Karen belong to a certain class of American with very privileged lives with their architecture business, alcohol problems, dog named THE Doodles and general selfishness, however, I wouldn't really have said this is intended to be funny or to send some sort of message as satire usually does. The characters are very well drawn, but not particularly likeable, although as a reader you do come to understand why at least Karen and Pickle are the way that they are, and I didn't find Karen a stereotype, although I found Stan a bit more difficult to judge as we don't really get inside his head in the same way.
The plot is more of a conundrum, as it starts with a bang with the scene on the bridge and slows down, with Karen and Pickle reminiscing about their lives and their pasts. It becomes a more difficult read as there are not always clear distinctions between the thinking about the present and the future, and not much actually happens in the story. This is all ended in a highly unexpected way, and I'm not sure I agreed with the ending. I would like to do a seperate post just discussing it as I don't want to spoil it for people. All in all, a rather bizarre book but overall it was well written and it did make me think.
The plot is more of a conundrum, as it starts with a bang with the scene on the bridge and slows down, with Karen and Pickle reminiscing about their lives and their pasts. It becomes a more difficult read as there are not always clear distinctions between the thinking about the present and the future, and not much actually happens in the story. This is all ended in a highly unexpected way, and I'm not sure I agreed with the ending. I would like to do a seperate post just discussing it as I don't want to spoil it for people. All in all, a rather bizarre book but overall it was well written and it did make me think.
January 24, 2019
Stan and Karen McArdle are an alcoholic power couple who run an immensely successful architect/design firm. Although the book seems set in present day New York/New Jersey, for some reason they always seem to be watching and referencing Knot's Landing. Architect Stan's identical twin brother Pickle the policeman forms the third leg of a twisted love triangle. All three main characters are beautiful at a superficial level, yet struggling with psychic wounds from childhood. The author provides no medical or epigenetic basis for her twins being more identical than most identical twins, nor is there anything attributed for the McArdle's sudden ability to go cold turkey following the accident that introduces them to their mysterious houseguest, Junie. It is all very complicated and confusing. Filled with psychological twists and turns.
March 25, 2019
I do love a book with good, dysfunctional characters and I definitely got that here! Funny in places but with a sort of tragic undertone, we follow a couple, his twin brother and a strange woman as they try and make sense of the world and find their places in it. Often funny and quite weird, this book turned out to be a thoroughly satisfying, albeit a bit bonkers, read.
It all starts as Karen and Stan are returning home from a party when they crash their car to avoid a woman, Junie, standing in the road. It transpires that Junie's boyfriend has just jumped from the bridge they crashed on. Fearing the cops will discover they are drunk, Karen and Stan call Stan's brother Pickle to help them. He's a cop too and hopefully will be able to smooth things over. Which would have probably worked had Karen not taken a shine to Junie and offered her their basement to stay in as she grieves for her boyfriend. A decision that Pickle finds hard to swallow given that his part of the brownstone the couple live in has not yet been renovated and he is still living in a cramped flat. And so begins a car-crash of a story that affects each of our four characters and their relationships to each other.
As with all books I read, I do need to connect to the characters in some way. I need something to connect to or emote with them. Here, I did get that connection, albeit in a mostly negative way as the author has created the most horribly dysfunctional characters with few redeeming characteristics. In fact, the only character I really liked was Doodles, Karen and Stan's dog!
Karen and Stan bickered and drank their way through the book, Junie exhibited more than a healthy share of pathos and Pickle, once I got to know the man behind the badge, turned out to be a bit nasty. But, as the story unfolded, the reasons for said behaviour became more and more evident and they started to become more believable, which meant that what happened in the end worked.
Some of the things that happen along the way are a little dark and the book could have got a bit too heavy if it wasn't for the humour interspersed throughout. Some of which was obvious, a lot oblique and some definitely on the black side! But this is what kept me going in a book that was, at times, a bit uncomfortable to read. But it's a book about dysfunctional characters all coming together, bringing certain things to a head, so you don't expect it to be all hearts and flowers!
All in all, a good solid read and a very brave debut novel. I'm looking forward to seeing what the author serves up next time. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.
It all starts as Karen and Stan are returning home from a party when they crash their car to avoid a woman, Junie, standing in the road. It transpires that Junie's boyfriend has just jumped from the bridge they crashed on. Fearing the cops will discover they are drunk, Karen and Stan call Stan's brother Pickle to help them. He's a cop too and hopefully will be able to smooth things over. Which would have probably worked had Karen not taken a shine to Junie and offered her their basement to stay in as she grieves for her boyfriend. A decision that Pickle finds hard to swallow given that his part of the brownstone the couple live in has not yet been renovated and he is still living in a cramped flat. And so begins a car-crash of a story that affects each of our four characters and their relationships to each other.
As with all books I read, I do need to connect to the characters in some way. I need something to connect to or emote with them. Here, I did get that connection, albeit in a mostly negative way as the author has created the most horribly dysfunctional characters with few redeeming characteristics. In fact, the only character I really liked was Doodles, Karen and Stan's dog!
Karen and Stan bickered and drank their way through the book, Junie exhibited more than a healthy share of pathos and Pickle, once I got to know the man behind the badge, turned out to be a bit nasty. But, as the story unfolded, the reasons for said behaviour became more and more evident and they started to become more believable, which meant that what happened in the end worked.
Some of the things that happen along the way are a little dark and the book could have got a bit too heavy if it wasn't for the humour interspersed throughout. Some of which was obvious, a lot oblique and some definitely on the black side! But this is what kept me going in a book that was, at times, a bit uncomfortable to read. But it's a book about dysfunctional characters all coming together, bringing certain things to a head, so you don't expect it to be all hearts and flowers!
All in all, a good solid read and a very brave debut novel. I'm looking forward to seeing what the author serves up next time. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.
January 10, 2019
Pickle’s Progress by Marcia Butler
Well developed characters are the strength of this novel as we watch the McArdles go through their daily lives. Set in New York City, you can almost feel yourself there.
Stan and his wife Karen run a business together, while Stan’s twin brother Pickle, a NYC cop, is a constant presence in their lives.
Happenstance brings the three McArdles to meet young Junie who will change all their lives. For the better? Maybe.
Though some of the events are predictable, there are enough surprises to intrigue you to read to the very end.Human weaknesses afflict every character in the story.
I encourage you to read Pickle’s Progress for
an enjoyable, easy-flow tale about people who could be your friends, neighbors, or indeed, even you.
Well developed characters are the strength of this novel as we watch the McArdles go through their daily lives. Set in New York City, you can almost feel yourself there.
Stan and his wife Karen run a business together, while Stan’s twin brother Pickle, a NYC cop, is a constant presence in their lives.
Happenstance brings the three McArdles to meet young Junie who will change all their lives. For the better? Maybe.
Though some of the events are predictable, there are enough surprises to intrigue you to read to the very end.Human weaknesses afflict every character in the story.
I encourage you to read Pickle’s Progress for
an enjoyable, easy-flow tale about people who could be your friends, neighbors, or indeed, even you.
April 7, 2019
Marcia Butler is masterful--as memoirist, musician, now novelist. A delight!
January 16, 2019
Dysfubtional characters with messed love triangle
April 17, 2019
Via my book blog at https://cavebookreviews.blogspot.com/
Marcia Butler's debut novel comes after a successful memoir. The story is about four lost souls in New York. Two are identical male twins, Stan and Pickle, and the two women are Karen, Stan's wife, and June, a stranger brought to live with Stan and Karen.
Stan and Karen, drunk as usual, had to stop suddenly on the George Washington Bridge to avoid hitting June who was standing in their lane of traffic. It was raining, and June appeared still like a statue. When they convinced her to get in their car, she explained that her boyfriend had just jumped over the bridge.
Events then turn fantastical with an invitation to June to stay with Karen and Stan in their brownstone. An ulterior motive might be that they did not want to get caught driving while intoxicated, again. June went along with the idea and became a permanent fixture in the basement of the brownstone.
Pickle gets a call a minute after the accident. He is a cop, and they always call him when a problem that might deal with the law pops up. The saga following that one horrible night on the GW bridge brings four people together as well as pulling them apart. Pickle's Progress is a compelling story of four miserable people who suddenly find some hope in life. They may get a second chance at peace and happiness.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance copy of this novel.
Marcia Butler's debut novel comes after a successful memoir. The story is about four lost souls in New York. Two are identical male twins, Stan and Pickle, and the two women are Karen, Stan's wife, and June, a stranger brought to live with Stan and Karen.
Stan and Karen, drunk as usual, had to stop suddenly on the George Washington Bridge to avoid hitting June who was standing in their lane of traffic. It was raining, and June appeared still like a statue. When they convinced her to get in their car, she explained that her boyfriend had just jumped over the bridge.
Events then turn fantastical with an invitation to June to stay with Karen and Stan in their brownstone. An ulterior motive might be that they did not want to get caught driving while intoxicated, again. June went along with the idea and became a permanent fixture in the basement of the brownstone.
Pickle gets a call a minute after the accident. He is a cop, and they always call him when a problem that might deal with the law pops up. The saga following that one horrible night on the GW bridge brings four people together as well as pulling them apart. Pickle's Progress is a compelling story of four miserable people who suddenly find some hope in life. They may get a second chance at peace and happiness.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance copy of this novel.
March 13, 2019
The title of this book drew me in as I could only think of one other novel with “Pickle” in the title, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle. The latter is an 18th century satire in which a young, self-centered country gentleman becomes alienated from his cold-hearted mother, the father who snubs him, and his dissolute brother. Little did I realize how these ideas would resonate through Pickle’s Progress. Pickle and his brother Stan are such identical twins their mother dressed them differently so she could tell them apart. Though identical, the mother prefers the eldest-born (by mere seconds), Stan. who is given every imaginable opportunity including upper-crust college education. Pickle, on the other hand, drops out of community college and becomes a cop. Pickle falls in love with Karen, but through machinations of their mother, Karen marries Stan. Together they become a successful Manhattan power couple.
The opening scene is a tour deforce, setting up the power struggle between the brothers. Stan and Karen are alcoholics, who drive while intoxicated. They have an accident in the rain on the George Washington bridge and nearly run over a young woman, Junie, whose lover has just jumped over the railing. Pickle must rescue his brother and Karen for the umpteenth time as well as get a statement from Junie regarding her lover’s suicide.
This book is a mass of dysfunction in both Karen’s and Pickle and Stan’s families and a bizarre love triangle between the three that has somehow been stable for many years. When Karen asks Junie to move into the brownstone she shares with Stan, the triangle becomes an quadrangle and the structure becomes unstable. There are issues of child sexual abuse in Karen’s past that are never fully resolved. While the opening is exceptional, the middle is something of a slow muddle, then there is an unexpected twist marked by a point-of-view shift that is a bit startling. Overall, it is an unusual domestic thriller with little overt violence, but lots of psychological abuse by all parties.
The opening scene is a tour deforce, setting up the power struggle between the brothers. Stan and Karen are alcoholics, who drive while intoxicated. They have an accident in the rain on the George Washington bridge and nearly run over a young woman, Junie, whose lover has just jumped over the railing. Pickle must rescue his brother and Karen for the umpteenth time as well as get a statement from Junie regarding her lover’s suicide.
This book is a mass of dysfunction in both Karen’s and Pickle and Stan’s families and a bizarre love triangle between the three that has somehow been stable for many years. When Karen asks Junie to move into the brownstone she shares with Stan, the triangle becomes an quadrangle and the structure becomes unstable. There are issues of child sexual abuse in Karen’s past that are never fully resolved. While the opening is exceptional, the middle is something of a slow muddle, then there is an unexpected twist marked by a point-of-view shift that is a bit startling. Overall, it is an unusual domestic thriller with little overt violence, but lots of psychological abuse by all parties.
January 4, 2019
I received a complimentary copy of this book through Netgalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
Karen and Stan almost hit a woman late one night while driving home drunk from a friend's house. The woman, Junie, just witnessed her boyfriend commit suicide by jumping off the bridge. Stan decides to call Pickle, his twin brother and also a cop, to cover up his dui. Karen invites Junie to stay with them while she recovers from the shock. What follows is a complicated story of past childhood trauma and twisted relationships.
Karen and Stan almost hit a woman late one night while driving home drunk from a friend's house. The woman, Junie, just witnessed her boyfriend commit suicide by jumping off the bridge. Stan decides to call Pickle, his twin brother and also a cop, to cover up his dui. Karen invites Junie to stay with them while she recovers from the shock. What follows is a complicated story of past childhood trauma and twisted relationships.
May 1, 2019
A soulless marriage – implications for the soul of a city and a nation (Manhattan, presumably present day): Mammon is a word art and architecture critic for The Washington Post Philip Kennicott used to characterize Manhattan’s newest, “hated” architectural behemoth, Hudson Yards, writing it “exacerbates the worst tendencies of a city that seems hellbent on erasing anything distinctive or humane in its built environment.”
Mammon is a perfect word to summarize how you’ll feel about Marcia Butler’s three flawed, unhappy, coarse characters who make up an entangled marriage trio: an unlikable couple, Karen and Stan McArdle, and Stan’s identical-looking twin brother Pickle. They’ll get under your skin in this sizzling debut novel.
I looked up the meaning of mammon – intensifying greed and wealth to a debasing influence – but didn’t have to since the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist goes on to equate it to a vulgar mess. Like the trio.
You don’t have to like these characters to like what Butler has crafted. In fresh prose, she shows a vivid knowledge of Manhattan infused with her range of music and art sensibilities. Prose she contrasts with sarcasm, exasperation, anger, deceit to depict stuck, caustic, conflicted, hungry characters. Pickle is the most excessive abuser of profanity, but they’re all debased in one way or another, challenging us to examine what lies beneath all this vitriol?
The married McArdles are crass and deeply troubled but work as a power couple in a powerhouse city. An upper-class architectural team catering to rich New Yorkers, whose firm is cleverly located in the Lipstick Building, named for its shape, now infamously known as the place where Bernard Madoff ripped off billions in a scandalous Ponzi scheme.
For a city on the verge of losing the unique character of many beloved neighborhoods, a lost marriage serves as a microcosm for what many lament is a vanishing city. Greed and wealth hellbent on erasing iconic historical buildings and places, forcing out immigrants, minorities, artists who gave these neighborhoods so much color and individuality, to erect colossal, sterile environments. The novel is a voyeuristic view of a broken marriage that comes with a warning about the pervasiveness and perniciousness of excessive greed and wealth.
Pickle’s Progress reads like the work of a seasoned author. Butler is an accomplished artist in other art forms: lauded classical musician (oboe), interior designer, memoirist (The Skin Above My Knee), and documentarian whose film The Creative Imperative is due out in June. Her novel transfers these themes to a different art form.
Classical music helps Karen intuit the moods of a fourth key character: distraught, depressed Junie, who complicates these already compromised people and relationships. An emotional wreck, for an explicit reason unlike the others.
Junie is part of the dramatic opening scene: a car accident on the George Washington Bridge intersects with a suicide. Stan was driving, Karen beside him. Both drunk (as usual) and arguing (as usual) about a dinner party in New Jersey with friends they no longer had anything in common with. (They’re raising children, thankfully Stan and Karen are not, overly preoccupied with themselves and their competitive business.) Getting out of the car to inspect the damage, they spot a young woman (Junie) looking horrified on the bridge’s walkway. Her boyfriend has just jumped over the bridge. This is the moment their sad worlds collide.
Karen insists helpless Junie temporarily move in with them, into the upscale-decorated basement/garden level of their four-story architectural beauty, a brownstone on the posh Upper East Side. “Sneaky” and “pushy,” Karen seizes on the idea of having Junie buffer their bitter marriage knowing full well her presence will agitate an already agitated Stan. Junie ends up consenting, soon borrowing their classical musical collection, which resounds to the kitchen-level floor, further stressing out Stan.
But first Stan must call Pickle to fix things (as he’s done since childhood) before the police show up and discover he’s drunk. Pickle will rescue him, as a veteran of the NYC police force. Arriving in minutes, you might assume these twins are close. How could they be when their mother made sure Pickle never overshadowed her blatantly favored son who needed protecting. No accident Pickle opted for a gritty job protecting New Yorkers, a far cry from Stan’s uppity circle.
Childhood influences and abuse are essential to unraveling a trio mixed up in secrets and egregious behaviors debasing themselves. Disentangling this messy, sorry crew makes for fascinating character studies, open to interpretation. How did they get to the unwanted places they all find themselves in?
If it weren’t for reviews of the author’s memoir about her abusive childhood, we might not pay close enough attention to its impact on Pickle’s and Karen’s life, victims of reneged parental responsibilities and chronic abuse.
All three were raised by single-parents. The brothers by a conniving mother. Karen by a despicable father; a mother who deserted her and her younger sister. Both parents left indelible marks. Pickle has a hidden, softer side he barely shows, masked by his crudeness and slovenliness. Karen, a “cold strategist,” is “fiercely devoted” to her mother’s mantras to “always, always, go for the money” and “be beautiful.”
That she is, looking ten years younger than her forty-two-year-old self. Stan is somewhere in mid-life. A mistake to chalk up his crisis to a mid-life one. Tormented by demons, for starters he needs treatment to ease his obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. Karen leaves creative design to temperamental “genius” Stan, runs everything else, making Stan look much better than he is. Abnormally fixated on organizing his life down to color-coordinating his socks and outfits, spices lined up in the kitchen, he’s unable to function in chaos, ironically causing it. We don’t feel empathy for him, maybe we should, but he’s so downright oppressive and irritable with everyone and couldn’t care less.
Even The Doodles – a gorgeous, impossible-not-to-love, very expensive, designer dog breed can’t find love from his unloving owners, so he quickly attaches to Junie. Dogs know when they’re not loved.
An interesting element aids the plot:the topic of identical twins. Stan and Pickle share “Clark Gable” movie-star looks. Might that confuse one’s sexual attractions?
Butler further ups the ante with the trio’s dangerous real estate arrangement, yet to materialize but festering. Pooling their funds, all own a share of the coveted brownstone. Not a fair playing field on a policeman’s salary, but life hasn’t been fair to Pickle. (He deserves the title’s namesake.) He’s supposed to move into the upper two floors but Karen keeps stalling on the renovations. Perhaps Junie is another delay tactic? Why?
Pickle is not at all happy about waiting around (Stan seems oblivious) once Junie moves in, uncharacteristically attracted to her. He being a one-night-stand kind of guy, hardened for fragile Junie who seems childlike, not twenty nine years old, though she appreciates fine art and music. Pickle perceives her as “pristine,” as if she’ll wipe his slate clean.
The novel reads as if we’re watching a sobering movie involving a train wreck we sense is coming if things don’t drastically change. They do, but not how we expected.
Odd but revealing, the couple binge watch another family soap opera, Dallas. Beautiful, seductive actors and actresses starred in that long-running TV show that spanned the late 70s/80s/early 90s, revitalized in 2012. Seems we can’t get enough of the lust that has transformed too much of the city. A melancholy ode begging to preserve as much of its character left.
Can these characters be saved? Is Pickle’s progress a “breakdown or a breakthrough”? Will America breakdown or breakthrough in 2020?
Lorraine (EnchantedProse.com)
Mammon is a perfect word to summarize how you’ll feel about Marcia Butler’s three flawed, unhappy, coarse characters who make up an entangled marriage trio: an unlikable couple, Karen and Stan McArdle, and Stan’s identical-looking twin brother Pickle. They’ll get under your skin in this sizzling debut novel.
I looked up the meaning of mammon – intensifying greed and wealth to a debasing influence – but didn’t have to since the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist goes on to equate it to a vulgar mess. Like the trio.
You don’t have to like these characters to like what Butler has crafted. In fresh prose, she shows a vivid knowledge of Manhattan infused with her range of music and art sensibilities. Prose she contrasts with sarcasm, exasperation, anger, deceit to depict stuck, caustic, conflicted, hungry characters. Pickle is the most excessive abuser of profanity, but they’re all debased in one way or another, challenging us to examine what lies beneath all this vitriol?
The married McArdles are crass and deeply troubled but work as a power couple in a powerhouse city. An upper-class architectural team catering to rich New Yorkers, whose firm is cleverly located in the Lipstick Building, named for its shape, now infamously known as the place where Bernard Madoff ripped off billions in a scandalous Ponzi scheme.
For a city on the verge of losing the unique character of many beloved neighborhoods, a lost marriage serves as a microcosm for what many lament is a vanishing city. Greed and wealth hellbent on erasing iconic historical buildings and places, forcing out immigrants, minorities, artists who gave these neighborhoods so much color and individuality, to erect colossal, sterile environments. The novel is a voyeuristic view of a broken marriage that comes with a warning about the pervasiveness and perniciousness of excessive greed and wealth.
Pickle’s Progress reads like the work of a seasoned author. Butler is an accomplished artist in other art forms: lauded classical musician (oboe), interior designer, memoirist (The Skin Above My Knee), and documentarian whose film The Creative Imperative is due out in June. Her novel transfers these themes to a different art form.
Classical music helps Karen intuit the moods of a fourth key character: distraught, depressed Junie, who complicates these already compromised people and relationships. An emotional wreck, for an explicit reason unlike the others.
Junie is part of the dramatic opening scene: a car accident on the George Washington Bridge intersects with a suicide. Stan was driving, Karen beside him. Both drunk (as usual) and arguing (as usual) about a dinner party in New Jersey with friends they no longer had anything in common with. (They’re raising children, thankfully Stan and Karen are not, overly preoccupied with themselves and their competitive business.) Getting out of the car to inspect the damage, they spot a young woman (Junie) looking horrified on the bridge’s walkway. Her boyfriend has just jumped over the bridge. This is the moment their sad worlds collide.
Karen insists helpless Junie temporarily move in with them, into the upscale-decorated basement/garden level of their four-story architectural beauty, a brownstone on the posh Upper East Side. “Sneaky” and “pushy,” Karen seizes on the idea of having Junie buffer their bitter marriage knowing full well her presence will agitate an already agitated Stan. Junie ends up consenting, soon borrowing their classical musical collection, which resounds to the kitchen-level floor, further stressing out Stan.
But first Stan must call Pickle to fix things (as he’s done since childhood) before the police show up and discover he’s drunk. Pickle will rescue him, as a veteran of the NYC police force. Arriving in minutes, you might assume these twins are close. How could they be when their mother made sure Pickle never overshadowed her blatantly favored son who needed protecting. No accident Pickle opted for a gritty job protecting New Yorkers, a far cry from Stan’s uppity circle.
Childhood influences and abuse are essential to unraveling a trio mixed up in secrets and egregious behaviors debasing themselves. Disentangling this messy, sorry crew makes for fascinating character studies, open to interpretation. How did they get to the unwanted places they all find themselves in?
If it weren’t for reviews of the author’s memoir about her abusive childhood, we might not pay close enough attention to its impact on Pickle’s and Karen’s life, victims of reneged parental responsibilities and chronic abuse.
All three were raised by single-parents. The brothers by a conniving mother. Karen by a despicable father; a mother who deserted her and her younger sister. Both parents left indelible marks. Pickle has a hidden, softer side he barely shows, masked by his crudeness and slovenliness. Karen, a “cold strategist,” is “fiercely devoted” to her mother’s mantras to “always, always, go for the money” and “be beautiful.”
That she is, looking ten years younger than her forty-two-year-old self. Stan is somewhere in mid-life. A mistake to chalk up his crisis to a mid-life one. Tormented by demons, for starters he needs treatment to ease his obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. Karen leaves creative design to temperamental “genius” Stan, runs everything else, making Stan look much better than he is. Abnormally fixated on organizing his life down to color-coordinating his socks and outfits, spices lined up in the kitchen, he’s unable to function in chaos, ironically causing it. We don’t feel empathy for him, maybe we should, but he’s so downright oppressive and irritable with everyone and couldn’t care less.
Even The Doodles – a gorgeous, impossible-not-to-love, very expensive, designer dog breed can’t find love from his unloving owners, so he quickly attaches to Junie. Dogs know when they’re not loved.
An interesting element aids the plot:the topic of identical twins. Stan and Pickle share “Clark Gable” movie-star looks. Might that confuse one’s sexual attractions?
Butler further ups the ante with the trio’s dangerous real estate arrangement, yet to materialize but festering. Pooling their funds, all own a share of the coveted brownstone. Not a fair playing field on a policeman’s salary, but life hasn’t been fair to Pickle. (He deserves the title’s namesake.) He’s supposed to move into the upper two floors but Karen keeps stalling on the renovations. Perhaps Junie is another delay tactic? Why?
Pickle is not at all happy about waiting around (Stan seems oblivious) once Junie moves in, uncharacteristically attracted to her. He being a one-night-stand kind of guy, hardened for fragile Junie who seems childlike, not twenty nine years old, though she appreciates fine art and music. Pickle perceives her as “pristine,” as if she’ll wipe his slate clean.
The novel reads as if we’re watching a sobering movie involving a train wreck we sense is coming if things don’t drastically change. They do, but not how we expected.
Odd but revealing, the couple binge watch another family soap opera, Dallas. Beautiful, seductive actors and actresses starred in that long-running TV show that spanned the late 70s/80s/early 90s, revitalized in 2012. Seems we can’t get enough of the lust that has transformed too much of the city. A melancholy ode begging to preserve as much of its character left.
Can these characters be saved? Is Pickle’s progress a “breakdown or a breakthrough”? Will America breakdown or breakthrough in 2020?
Lorraine (EnchantedProse.com)
November 28, 2018
I'm not sure if I liked this book or not. Maybe I didn't. It's certainly not a comfortable book. However, it's one of those books that seems to be staying with me, a book I keep finding myself thinking about, so maybe that's better than being comfortable.
I try very hard not to offer spoilers, and I'm sorry if I do that inadvertently.
This is a book about four very damaged people. Identical twins, Sam and Pickle; Sam's wife, Karen: and Junie, the girl Sam and Karen find on a bridge after a failed suicide pact.
For me, the fascination of the book was in the gradual unveiling of the characters. My thinking about them shifted dramatically as the book went on - by the end my opinions of them had swung through about 180 degrees. That's how it is in real life, of course. We meet someone who seems really nice, and then find out more about them, feel less positive, may even end up disliking them. We meet someone who seems really difficult, and gradually grow to understand them.
The main problem for me was Pickle himself. Even though I grew to understand more about him, I found it harder and harder to like him as the book went on. Even though he was right, even though he'd been wronged more than anyone - I still struggled to like him as a person.
The other issue was the ending. I've read a few books like this recently - the ones where you start to think "That's how it should go - how are we going to get there?" - and then the author just skips all the stages of "getting there" and leaps to the ending.
Overall, though, it's an interesting, disconcerting book, and I'm glad I read it. It evokes a New York I've not really seen anywhere else, and the people in it felt like real people.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me get my hands on an ARC. This is my honest review.
I try very hard not to offer spoilers, and I'm sorry if I do that inadvertently.
This is a book about four very damaged people. Identical twins, Sam and Pickle; Sam's wife, Karen: and Junie, the girl Sam and Karen find on a bridge after a failed suicide pact.
For me, the fascination of the book was in the gradual unveiling of the characters. My thinking about them shifted dramatically as the book went on - by the end my opinions of them had swung through about 180 degrees. That's how it is in real life, of course. We meet someone who seems really nice, and then find out more about them, feel less positive, may even end up disliking them. We meet someone who seems really difficult, and gradually grow to understand them.
The main problem for me was Pickle himself. Even though I grew to understand more about him, I found it harder and harder to like him as the book went on. Even though he was right, even though he'd been wronged more than anyone - I still struggled to like him as a person.
The other issue was the ending. I've read a few books like this recently - the ones where you start to think "That's how it should go - how are we going to get there?" - and then the author just skips all the stages of "getting there" and leaps to the ending.
Overall, though, it's an interesting, disconcerting book, and I'm glad I read it. It evokes a New York I've not really seen anywhere else, and the people in it felt like real people.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me get my hands on an ARC. This is my honest review.
June 10, 2019
Marcia Butler writes beautifully, bringing sensory details and New York City to vibrant life every page; and given that talent, it's a gutsy move that she chose to write about characters we're nearly guaranteed to dislike, at least a lot of the time. Yet I think that's part of what kept me interested: the fascination of what these people would do to each other--and worse, themselves--next, because truly there seemed to be no limit to the possibilities. And despite all that, I felt empathy for them, because we learn bit by bit WHY they're this way, and what damaged them.
Calling Stan and Karen's marriage a car wreck you can't look away from is accurate but a little too on-the-nose, given the story starts with a literal car wreck, in which they meet the young Junie, whose boyfriend has just jumped off the George Washington Bridge. This incident kicks off a set of life changes in not only the three of them but in Pickle, Stan's twin, a NYC cop who shows up to keep them out of trouble--a job he's getting tired of for many reasons. The ways in which the four of them turn out to be interconnected are more surprising and disturbing than I could have guessed at the start. But I liked that. It's been a while since a book truly kept me guessing rather than ending predictably.
While reading, I had the thought that I got a Tennessee Williams vibe from this book. Mind you, I haven't actually read Williams since probably college, but I recall those plays feeling similar, with amusingly, intriguingly dysfunctional characters who you can't stop watching, even when you're sure they're going to destroy themselves or each other before the end. But they might surprise you.
Calling Stan and Karen's marriage a car wreck you can't look away from is accurate but a little too on-the-nose, given the story starts with a literal car wreck, in which they meet the young Junie, whose boyfriend has just jumped off the George Washington Bridge. This incident kicks off a set of life changes in not only the three of them but in Pickle, Stan's twin, a NYC cop who shows up to keep them out of trouble--a job he's getting tired of for many reasons. The ways in which the four of them turn out to be interconnected are more surprising and disturbing than I could have guessed at the start. But I liked that. It's been a while since a book truly kept me guessing rather than ending predictably.
While reading, I had the thought that I got a Tennessee Williams vibe from this book. Mind you, I haven't actually read Williams since probably college, but I recall those plays feeling similar, with amusingly, intriguingly dysfunctional characters who you can't stop watching, even when you're sure they're going to destroy themselves or each other before the end. But they might surprise you.
August 27, 2019
Marcia Butler's first novel, and a very strange novel it is. Karen and Stan are a couple who run an interior decorating business but seem to spend most of their time getting drunk. One evening they are driving and Stan swerves to avoid hitting a girl on a bridge. It appears that she has just witnessed her boyfriend jump off the bridge to his death. But don't let that sadden you because it doesn't seem to sadden any of the characters, only maybe his girlfriend, Junie, whom you never really get to know well. Karen quickly calls Stan's twin brother, Pickle, who is a cop and able to ensure that Stan does not get a DUI ticket. Stan and Pickle have a weird relationship--Karen used to be Pickle's girl, it seems, but is now with Stan. Pickle at once falls madly in love with Junie, a sweet, frail, quiet type, whom Karen has invited to her home to recuperate. But her home is not just her's and Stan's: it was left to Stan and Pickle by their parents and Stan and Karen were supposed to fix up the top floor for Pickle, which they have never done. And it also seems that Karen is not finished with Pickle as she is sleeping with him and with Stan all the while Junie is living in the guest room downstairs. A well written but very strange book which I didn't get.
December 13, 2018
Pickle’s Progress #
Marcia Butler
Central. Avenue Publishing
This book is different from any other book I have read. It started out slow for me and it took awhile to get into the spirit of the storyline. The characters include twin brothers, “Pickle”, and Stan who happen to be identical in a scary way. Both brothers are in love with the same woman. This causes much mayhem, as you can imagine. I kept waiting for them to discover this about each other. The book is somewhat funny in spots, sad in others. There are some sexual scenes sprinkled throughout, so if that bothers you, you might want to avoid this book. Overall, I enjoyed the book more than I had expected. It does seem to end fairly abrupt and you have to fill in the blanks of all your questions on your own. I expect this book will receive a large number of successes.
Thank you to Central Avenue Publishing and NetGally for an advanced read copy of this book for a fair and honest review. 3 Stars for me.
Marcia Butler
Central. Avenue Publishing
This book is different from any other book I have read. It started out slow for me and it took awhile to get into the spirit of the storyline. The characters include twin brothers, “Pickle”, and Stan who happen to be identical in a scary way. Both brothers are in love with the same woman. This causes much mayhem, as you can imagine. I kept waiting for them to discover this about each other. The book is somewhat funny in spots, sad in others. There are some sexual scenes sprinkled throughout, so if that bothers you, you might want to avoid this book. Overall, I enjoyed the book more than I had expected. It does seem to end fairly abrupt and you have to fill in the blanks of all your questions on your own. I expect this book will receive a large number of successes.
Thank you to Central Avenue Publishing and NetGally for an advanced read copy of this book for a fair and honest review. 3 Stars for me.
February 17, 2019
When I downloaded Pickle’s Progress from NetGalley I was excited to read it. The blurb made it sound edgy and interesting, and the author’s introduction even more so. However, the more I read it the less I liked it, and the more I realized that the story is nothing like the description. There is no warmth or humor or love. The characters are all unlikeable. A novel can still work if the characters are unlikeable, but not if they are also uninteresting. They all lie, cheat, whine, sneak around, pretend to be what they are not, and have some pretty serious issues stemming from past or present events, but you don’t really care. Just when you start to like someone or feel sympathetic, more is revealed about their past or present behavior and issues that makes it impossible to relate to them.
I love to read and try to give each book the benefit of the doubt, especially when it’s an author’s debut novel. Frankly, though, had I not committed to writing a review when I downloaded the book from NetGalley I would have stopped reading about half-way through. I kept hoping for some logic or purpose to the flow of the story but there was not, and the ending was unsatisfying. I do thank NetGalley and Central Avenue Publishing for the opportunity to read Pickle’s Progress and provide this honest review. I just regret that it could not be a more positive one.
I love to read and try to give each book the benefit of the doubt, especially when it’s an author’s debut novel. Frankly, though, had I not committed to writing a review when I downloaded the book from NetGalley I would have stopped reading about half-way through. I kept hoping for some logic or purpose to the flow of the story but there was not, and the ending was unsatisfying. I do thank NetGalley and Central Avenue Publishing for the opportunity to read Pickle’s Progress and provide this honest review. I just regret that it could not be a more positive one.
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