Life Is Everywhere

by Lucy Ives

A multi-faceted, matryoshka doll of a novel which asks how far we ever able to understand ourselves.

Manhattan, 2014. Erin Adamo is locked out of her apartment. Her husband has just left her and her keys are at her parents’ apartment, abandoned when she exited mid-dinner after her father–once again–lost control. Erin takes refuge in the library of the university where she is a grad student. Her bag contains two manuscripts she’s written, along with a monograph by a faculty member who’s recently become embroiled in a bizarre scandal. Erin isn’t sure what she’s doing, but a small, mostly unconscious part of her knows: within these documents is a key she’s needed all along.

With unflinching precision, Life Is Everywhere captures emotional events that hover fitfully at the borders of visibility and intelligibility, showing how the past lives on, often secretly and at the expense of the present. Multifarious, mischievous, and deeply humane, Lucy Ives’s latest masterpiece rejoices in what a novel, and a self, carry.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Art, American, 21st Century, Contemporary, Writing

400 pages, Paperback

First published October 4, 2022

About the author

Lucy Ives is the author of several books of poetry and short prose, including The Hermit and the novella nineties. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Lapham’s Quarterly, and at newyorker.com. For five years she was an editor with the online magazine Triple Canopy. A graduate of Harvard and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from New York University. She teaches at the Pratt Institute and is currently editing a collection of writings by the artist Madeline Gins.

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lucy Ives is one of my favorite writers, her willingness to experiment a major reason why. Life is Everywhere takes as its theoretical framework Ursula K. Le Guin's carrier bag of fiction, a framework that focuses on the interaction between narratives and meta-narratives, among other things. Here, Ives gives us a compelling shell of a story: the first 100 pages + the last 100 pages are likely to be among the best writing I read all year. Ives's prose is sharp, her floating narrative incisive, the story darkly funny. These sections alone would have made for a brilliant novel. But sandwiched between this outer story, we have writings by some of the characters - the contents of a book bag. In theory, these contents are meant to reveal more about the characters than the outer story. In a way they do, illustrating the interaction between narrative lenses. But the problem is that these inner narratives are (by design) amateurish and pompous, a major let down from the brilliant prose that surrounds it. Still, Ives might have pulled off the experiment if the middle section had been trimmed to a sensible 100 pages or less instead of an unwelcome 250+ pages. The most interesting nuggets in the middle section were each a single page. So high marks for the outer narrative and high marks for the innovation, but the inner narratives just didn't work here.

[Rob Forteath · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can't breeze through this book, expecting to be passively amused and entertained. It demands that you work with it as the ground shifts beneath your feet.

Early on, it is made plain that sexism will be a theme. Throughout the book, we see many circumstances involving an infuriating double standard between how society treats men versus what it demands from women. A central example of this is a scholarly work of Roger Herbsweet, which is given to us in its entirety. This is as plainly mediocre as the poem composed and read by Loudermilk in Lucy Ives' previous novel, except that Herbsweet has escaped Loudermilk's fate of being immediately laughed out of his career. We witness the old boys' club of official scholardom, who ensure that each other's every publication is referenced and reinforced.

In stark contrast to this is Erin Adamo -- her story, the stories she writes (also given to us in entirety), the seemingly at least somewhat autobiographical narrators within her stories, how her stories are received, how she perceives herself, and the many ways her family and society push that not only will they blame the victim, but demand that the victim blame herself.

This all sounds like we will have a straightforward time of it, with moral clarity for all. Fortunately, the author refuses to let us be sure of what is exactly literally true, what is happening between her authors and their stories, who has done exactly what to whom.

Of course there is much more going on in this book, as you may have gathered by seeing the very different takes of reviewers. It's definitely one of the most engaging books I have read in a long while, and I recommend it highly.

[Mateo Dk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love everything about how this book is written. The nature of truth, the usage of a narrative, invisible oppression vs the visible, sex and consent, dissociation, fiction vs truth, etc. The unique writing sucks you in and sinks into your brain.

[yuni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy shit

[Maddie Enos · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

whoa. instant favorite. the kind of book that shows you what books are capable of.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unfortunately she’s a genius

[lou · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was a weird one! described as a literalization of ursula k. leguin's "carrier bag theory of fiction," this was definitely a novel that was more focused on form than plot. that being said, it was an interesting read, if dense at times, and i enjoyed it. interesting meditations on academia, the craft of writing, and grief/abyss.

[Mai Ling · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just can’t. I feel like I am wasting my summer reading this book waiting for something to happen. Over it. Great writing, author is clearly a genius, but it’s time for me to move on.

[Adia⭐️(losing my mind) · Rating 4 out of 5]

oh. em. gee. this was... a bit of a wild ride. (in the sense that i was incredibly confused but also felt so seen and comforted in the most bizarre way)

To start off my review, I'd like to say I did not fully understand the plot, nor was i able to properly connect with it, until about 50-60% of the way through. That definitely makes it memorable, so props to Ives for that.

Moving on...WOW. I mean, to be honest, it may have been a bit pretentious at times, but aren't we all? It's forgivable in this case, since it is significantly overshadowed by the complexities of Erin's character and the whirlwind of a narrator she turned out to be. Erin is a whole can of worms, and considering this novel is supposed to be her story, it sort of bleeds into the stories of others. By others, i do of course mean the characters in her novel/novella, but also everyone she interacts with. Namely, Ben. now, Ben is objectively what we would consider a "bad person". emotionally abusive, manipulative, weaponizes his incompetence, adulterer, a very mean drunk and alcoholic, and just an overall loser. And yet, he knows Erin. He sees what she feels, what she IS, often before she can herself, as she often isn't completely present in the world. This is a plot point i thoroughly enjoyed, since Erin needs to separate herself from him as much as possible once their marriage breaks. She can't, of course, because in her mind, they are so connected. They were, of course, meant to be. (Despite the fact that Ben was never emotionally invested in them)

The emotional confusion, the lack of emotion, the overwhelming AMOUNT of emotion, that this novel exudes is just...
Erin's life is falling apart, and while she does feel, it's not in much of a... personal way? I guess what i mean is: Erin has discovered her husband has been cheating on her for the entirety of their relationship. This would make Erin heartbroken, therefore she is heartbroken. She is grieving. At least, she would be. Instead, she is floating, which in a way is her form of grieving-falling away from the physical world, living in her mind- but it's more than that. She's been disconnected from this existence, this humanity, for as long as she can remember, and this betrayal almost flips a switch in her that unlocks detachment to its fullest extent. In some ways, she can't feel it, because that wouldn't be Erin. to quote page 246: "The detachment I felt, which was in fact or at the same time a constriction, expressed itself as a problem of scale: things were either too large to touch, or they were too small..."

In addition to her emotional turmoil, Erin has to grapple with her lack of luck in finding someone willing to be her agent or publish her novel. The fact that, while she has undeniable talent, there is always something off about her writing, something glaringly obvious to all who read it.

Speaking of novel/novellas, LET'S TALK ABOUT THOSE! They are most definitely my favorite part of this book. I'm fact, her actually NOVEL was complex and confusing and satisfying, but I won't be talking about that right now because I simply do not have the willpower right now. I won't do a deep dive into...everything, but i will do a bit of a rave/description of the novella i most connected with.
Maison Close:
Maison Close is Erin's novella about a young girl, Amethyst. Amethyst and her childhood friend named HAMLET.
Amethyst is permitted by her pOsH parents to be friends with Hamlet because Hamlet's father writes for a well know magazine.
Hamlet is discovered to be a very disturbed child, with fantasies of killing her parents to be on her own in a tragic runaway story that she occasionally chooses to include Amethyst in. Hamlet is the star of the show; blond, beautiful, the envy of all, and so when she chooses to be Amethyst's friend, it's not an opportunity that can be passed up. As is to be expected, Hamlet's beauty "would not see her through to adulthood." However, this is unimportant. Hamlet is unreliable, short-tempered when she isn't the center of attention, and has no problem cutting people off when they don't obey her every whim. This is all portrayed in a rather matter-of-fact-and frankly emotionless- tone, which really speaks to the level of detachment experienced by Erin. it is to such a level that is seeps into every story she writes; every world she creates is infiltrated by her darkness. (Amethyst is the most obvious self-insert for Erin btw if you couldn't already tell)
So, the novella follows their friendship, it follows Amethyst's home life and, more importantly, her relationship with her mother.
"I turn eleven years old. I ask my mother, 'Am I pretty?'
'You are attractive,' my mother says
I think about this, then I say 'Can I be pretty, do you think?'
'Being pretty is a lot of work,' my mother tells me. 'It's a big responsibility. Is that something you would want to take on?"
'Yes,' I tell my mother. 'I want to be pretty.'"
When I tell you I shed actual tears here, I am not joking. The way she yearns for her mother's approval, even begs for it, only to receive a comment such as "You look very natural," when mom KNEW Amethyst needed more than that. And even her father, while he is bedridden, tells her she looks like a boy. He doesn't recognize her, he says. Later, she doesn't even recognize herself.
We follow Amethyst in her confusion, her need for love, her dependence on Hamlet, as she is in some way all Amethyst has. We witness Amethyst becoming aware of her metabolism, as she is made aware by her father that he thinks she'll be fat if she continues to eat to her satisfaction. "It seemed my innocence regarding my own metabolism was doing him personal harm," she thinks. She later resolves to never eat again. We watch as both of Hamlet's parents die within a six-week period. Natural causes (heart attack and cancer), of course. Hamlet moves to a new school.
Amethyst becomes detached, but maybe she always has been. maybe that's all she'll ever be.

Randomly, I have to mention how odd this book really is. We receive lessons in the history of botulism as our first introduction, and it is somehow neatly revisited multiple times? Also, I've never read anything structured this way and part of me is glad it's over because I lost my way too many times to count. I felt like I was Alice in Wonderland for a while there, not gonna lie.

To conclude this painfully long review, I need to clarify some things:
-this book is most definitely not perfect. it's confusing and irritating and even plain bad sometimes, but that doesn't manage to take away from the beauty of it. at least, not for me.
-i couldn't rate this 5 stars because the massive gap in between the pages being perfectly numbered to most of the book just NOT HAVING PAGE NUMBERS because of the novel and novellas was SO irritating. JUST PUT THE PAGE NUMBERS ON TOP SO I CAN KEEP TRACK OMFG.
-i actually struggled to not DNF this for a solid 50-100 pages, and am very surprised i ended up enjoying it so much
-this book is most definitely not for everyone. i would say it could be way to existentialist for some, so proceed with caution lol

TLDR: This was profound. I would say that it perfectly encapsulates the human experience, while simultaneously being completely disconnected from humanity itself. Perhaps I would even say I connected with this book on a deep, all-consuming, and even beautiful level. But, I chose to describe. To regurgitate my favorite quotes in an attempt to make someone understand just how important this book is to me.

[Rachel Louise Atkin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Life is Everywhere is a book I feel has thoroughly confused me. It is immediately such a dense book which pushes maximalism in theme to its very extreme. It’s main plot follows a woman called Erin who finds some old papers she has written and goes on to reflect about different parts of her life, however we also read extracts of the writing and the book is filled with textbook like history lessons and art criticism. I found the book wholly quite muddled and it really disorientates the reader. That being said I did completely love some sections only to be thrown off by what was coming next. It’s a very courageous piece of writing but be prepared to be strapped in and taken to a ride to just about everywhere. I would like to read more of Ives’ work but I know I would enjoy something a lot more nuanced next time.

[Danielle Isbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I welcome a carrier bag fiction, but this, for me, was too sprawling and undisciplined in many, multiple amateurish center texts. While good and brilliant books can feel like work at times, I felt like much of this book only made sense to read if you were a full time academic paid to read/edit/provide feedback on unfinished work.

I loved the between the covers interview with Lucy Ives, and I preferred thinking about this book in theory with Daivd and Lucy. I really wanted to love this one and am a bit jealous of those who could sink into it. For me, this text held me at a distance nearly the whole time.

[☔ Mickey ☕ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, clever and at times funny but I think maybe I wasn't the right audience. To properly appreciate what the author is doing, seems to me to require a level of analysis that I don't have knowledge of/familiarity with. Agree with other reviewers that the bag contents were a bit too long. Reading Herbsweet's excerpt was painful.

What kept me going was the amazing prose (outside of the bag) - so much spoke to me & kept me determined to finish. I'll definitely be thinking about this book for a while, just might not land on any steady conclusions.

[Madison Weir · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cerebral and interesting. Very dense. A 500 page art critique veiled as fiction.

[Quinn Barber · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of those books that feel like they were written just for me. the book's paralysis/image/history motif has fundamentally affected me and the way I think.

"We are frequently taught that humans deceive one another for personal gain, but what we are not taught, what has largely been withheld, at least from the canon of American common sense, is that people lie without motivation - or, to be more precise, that they lie with the primary motivation of deceiving, and thus controlling, only themselves."

[Matt Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The void, like a veil, gets harder to see the closer you get.

[K LeMon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous, but not for everyone. This novel (at times) requires tolerance for if not enjoyment of academic writing. I loved the gender-bending and genre-bending.

[Michele]

LA Times 30 books we can’t wait for this fall

[Robert Wechsler]

It’s hard to do books within books, because the secondary books have to hold up on their own in addition to fulfilling the roles given them by the uber-author. This new novel is very smart and takes chances with books within the book, but only the first secondary book interested me. I skipped through a lot of the second, and the third, which is longer, caused me to put down the primary book. This was about halfway through.

[sohini]

I did not know what a systems novel was before this book, nor had I heard of Le Guin’s ‘carrier bag theory of fiction’ (novel = container of experiences that tell us about being alive) but we learning! I really enjoyed this book, especially the times when I understood it...Kind of reminds me of when I watched My Cousin Vinny with my grandma and she really laughed when she understood the English, but otherwise was just kind of like ?

The fact that it's funny and that it covers some really interesting history helped me get through the parts I couldn’t really connect the dots on. And sometimes the two were related—thousands of years of history conveyed to allow for a single punch line to work.

Some funny tidbits:
"He was a reformed sadist on his second marriage who, given an early interest in risky forms of self-medication hadn't expected to live this long."

"He was that sort of piercing, high-strung Protestant who absorbs languages and complex political histories with terrible ease. He was a natural diplomat, economist, scholar, hard-news journalist, or agent of the CIA. He could explain the past as a magic-free material scaffold that upholds and comprehensively predicts the present."

"The art-handling company had high turnover. It was a business designed to catch the dregs of liberal arts curricula, those who hadn't moved onto law school and a hobby."

"The agent seemed to want the people Erin described in her writing to realize things. She wanted them to figure out that bad things were happening to them and then to figure out how to make the bad things stop. Once the people had recognized that the bad things that were happening to them were what they were (i.e., bad things), then the people should use the rule of identity (bad things are bad) to reorient their personal systems of ethics and aesthetics. They should not experience the things that were bad! They should change their behavior! After this occurred—the great behavioral reorientation—then new events in the narrative should show how different results were obtained for the characters' lives. Subsequently, the book should end in glory."

Interesting history:
"It was frequently stated, by the middle of the century, that it was no easy task to distinguish between the genteel ladies of birth and well-compensated courtesans. Although the two categories almost never conversed, they imitated each other, with courtesans taking the lead in the course of their golden age, 1852-70."

On the allied attack on Hamburg: "Overall, the attack is thought to have killed some 42,600 civilians, wounding another 37,000 and decimating the city. Given the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the late summer two years later, one cannot refer to the destruction of Hamburg as the most brutal bombing of the war. That such a superlative must be reserved is a crime that human history has not fully digested..."

General parts I like:
"I have created a fantasy version of you who acts upon her intelligence regarding the meanings of these scary utterances. This imaginary parent is someone whom I respect and love. I keep her around to help me in my interactions with you."

"I was talking to my therapist, trying to tell her what I've learned about grieving since losing Cody. I was telling her that what is painful is not the loss of the person. This loss is basically an intellectual event and if you are able to look at it, you will be OK. The problem is the fact of the affection you bear this lost person. The affection will still be there, long after the disappearance of its recipient, and here is what happens: the affection dies. You must sit and keep watch as the affection dies."

"The narrator thought about how we are each born into a situation that is like a net or a maze. It holds us. It confuses us. It presents false paths. And yet it holds us. It is part of what keeps us alive."

"but, in fact it is only those to whom we are closest in whom we can truly realize the fact of ultimate unknowability, as far as other human beings are concerned."

"But what I'm saying is, it's not love in the old way, not like it used to be, not like you could die from."

"She sought others with meaningless interests who would, like [her], be satisfied by the invisible, ultra-low-worth tokens they would accumulate through this activity."

"Gender is the extent we go to in order to be loved." (This is Walter Benjamin, though.)

"Life exceeded Erin's capacity to know it."

[lysa · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Erin could not take more of the article. It was too…what was the word? It was too dense.”

Same sentiments. Interesting enough to not quit but it was a slog to read.

[Shayna · Rating 3 out of 5]

These 400 pages felt like 4000. While I appreciated the author’s obvious brilliance, and I occasionally laughed out loud, the lack of a plot or likable characters made this a terribly difficult read for me. I found the narrator’s struggle with mental illness depressing. And all of the stories within the story had me scratching my head. I kept wondering of the author: Why? Why are you torturing me like this? At the same time, I was mildly intrigued to finish it and see if it would somehow all come together. The author’s note at the end helped. But in general, if you like to read for pleasure, I would not recommend this book.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book made my brain physically hurt from reading it, but I would say it's very worth it, at the very least for the inventiveness of the way you can use the medium of a book

popsugar reading challenge 2024: a book with a title that is a complete sentence

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I simply cannot spend another second on this drudgery. Perhaps I have missed something. This book seems too existential for me.

[Mattie Driscoll · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the parts I loved and I hated the parts I hated

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yesterday, I finished Lucy Ives' 2022 novel Life is Everywhere. The novel centers around a woman, Erin, who is enrolled in graduate school in New York City. The framing story takes place over the course of one day, following Erin from a discussion section to her parents' apartment to her own apartment—from which she is locked out—and eventually to her university's library. While she walks to the library, the reader is given the contents of her bag to peruse: full manuscripts of both a novella and a novel written by Erin, a short academic work about an obscure French novelist written by a professor of Erins' who recently entered hot water for having an affair with one of his students, a fragment of a lecture by another member of the faculty, and an overdue utility bill. These "bag books" interrupt the main narrative of Life is Everywhere, but they are not left-turns which have nothing to do with what precedes them. Instead of the assumed path of a novel, where one learns more about the plot and the characters through action or memory, Ives uses fiction itself to tell us about not only the protagonist, but the main themes of the novel as well (the present, being, trauma, academia, art/fiction, history, parent/child relationships). The twin manuscripts help fill in Erin's past and future, while the academic work gives insight into the disgraced professor's motivations and personality. The unpaid bill and lecture fragment are quirky touches, but they also underscore the "reality" of this fiction and argue against a heirarchy of value/meaning when it comes to written materials. Additionally, the novel includes another academic article about the same French writer and a translation of his only work, though these are not carried in the bag like the others.

Ultimately, this novel is concerned with really the only thing meta-narratives of this sort can be concerned with: storytelling. Why do we tell stories, not only to others but also to ourselves? What is their use? Do they come from an inability to predict the future, a confusion about the past, or both? Do they reveal more about us or do they only multiply our questions? What is the value of fiction if it is not "true"? Is it still "real" in some sense? Are all stories reliant on cause and effect? How do you write about that which cannot be spoken of or put into simple terms? I don't know if the novel is trying to answer any of these questions, it's more like it's being written as though the answers are not set yet, giving the text a feeling of immense freedom and unpredictability. There is no doubt that Perec's Life: a User's Manual is an inspiration here (and aren't I lucky that that was the last book I read?!?!?!) Life is Everywhere is not nearly as indexical or as painstakingly historically accurate, though it does possess a similar fascination with narratives, art, and the more mundane aspects of modern life. Like A User's Manual as well, Life is Everywhere is possessed by the fiction which came before it. There are direct quotes from Kafka, as well as passages and descriptions that feel very in line with Melville's style if characterization (incisive, yet somehow retaining an irresolvable ambiguity), just to name two. It's just a joy to read because it is written by somebody who loves reading. Each narrative voice feels distinct and interesting, whether it is omniscient, personal, or academic. There are too many great turns of language to enumerate, too many interesting attempts at new forms of old meanings. I thought the frame narrative voice was always "reaching" in some sense, toward meaning or accuracy or humor, and that even if it didn't always grasp something, it was enough to be trying, struggling to communicate.

Every successive page in this book makes you want to reread the one you just turned. The thread is always twisting and turning and inviting you to look at the same world in a different way, always reminding you how close at hand life really is. The constructed books within shoot out beams of light and highlight each other's shadowy parts. Do they feel more real because they're books within a book? Possibly. Sometimes, you forget that you're reading Life is Everywhere and start to genuinely believe you are reading a translation of an actual esoteric French novella by a tired, depressed, directionless graduate student. And, hey, maybe you really are…

You should really READ IT!

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listening to David Naimon interview Lucy Ives, and hearing them speak about Ursula Le Guin’s carrier-bag theory of fiction, I couldn’t not read this book. And it did not disappoint! Podcast episode:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

From the book:

“This part is the most difficult. I did love Cody. I loved him, and also he loved me. I’m not sure I mentioned this. This was a reality and is contained in some segment of the history of the world, like an insect sealed in amber (iridescent hairs, frozen mandibles). We’re in the present no longer have access to these events, these conversations and glances and embraces, along with the more or less viable beliefs they might or might not have aroused and been expressions of— except as an image. A simple figure glitters in fossilized resin. It looks more or less OK back there.

“It would be easier had I not loved this person, if my loving him had not been a key factor in our misunderstanding. However, this was not the way things worked.

“And I, after things got bad, how hard it was to comprehend the decay of intelligibility, the way in which it no longer mattered that we could perceive each other’s thoughts in all their dappled, pebbled, mixed familiarity, that they were always close enough to bite and touch. It wasn’t that we stopped understanding each other. It was that we stopped caring about what we understood.” p. 57

“I was born without the right to anticipate the future. It dawned on me slowly. The human right to anticipate, to plan and know, it was like a skin being lifted, drawn away from the grid of the world during the period of my young adulthood. I felt it lifting, tugged gently off, with a swarming of new technologies, their automation of language and choice. “Oh,” I sighed. There was nothing before me, yet I continued to live. I was crazy, staring at this, but I was alive.” p.133

“Erin was aware of the boundless jealously [sic] that literature inspires. It was an old jealousy. There was the jealousy of writing itself, of course, the jealousy felt by writers who cannot stand one another’s products, but there was also the jealousy of reading, and this jealousy was less talked about, perhaps, because it was more common, even, than authorial envy. The jealousy of the reader went like this: The writer is speaking to me (and only me).” p. 396

[Dan Cassino · Rating 3 out of 5]

The plot here is minimal: a woman is tangentially caught up in an odd sex scandal in the literature department where she’s a grad student. She goes to visit her parents, gets in a fight with them, and leaves without her coat, and thus without her keys. So, she goes to the library, does some homework, and reads an article.
Given that most of this is in the publisher’s description of the book, you might reasonably approach the book knowing that the plot is not what the book is about. As the story makes clear, this is a response to the idea that characters should reach a point of catharsis, should learn and grow and emerge from a character arc as different people. No one in this book learns anything about themselves, even as the reader gets a number of revelations about them.
Most of this, with the exception of one reveal on just about the last page, is done indirectly, through an epistolary technique in which we get all of the papers in the main character’s bag, including a novella that she’s written and the introduction to a different book(used to lesser effect later on, as we read that book, and an article discussing it). This text within a text technique has become increasingly common recently- or maybe it’s a coincidence that I’ve read something like three in a row of them, including a murder mystery- but it’s carried off all, here. Parts read a lot like “Pale Fire,” others like an imitation of bad academic writing.
So, if the book isn’t about the plot, what is it about? A lot of it seems to be about grief, though over what, it’s not immediately clear. It’s also about academia and mediocre white men populating it, and the sexism inherent in the system, and, in one of the most playful sections, writing multiple choice questions. It’s not a particularly fun read, and it’s not exactly a puzzle box book that survives on the doling out of clues. In short, it’s a Modern Literary Novel, and your enjoyment will depend very strongly on how much you care about the problems of upper middle class New Yorkers and/or academics. As an academic who now lives just outside of New York, I know enough of these people in real life, and don’t need to spend too much time with them in my reading, but if you like that kind of thing, this is the kind of thing that you’ll like.

[Elizabeth Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me nearly a month to finish this book. And I honestly have no idea how to rate it. It's all over the place, and in many ways it's brilliant, and the writing is (mostly) enjoyable, although it's sometimes dry. The ideas it's conveying are interesting (although I'm sure I missed some.) It's an example of LeGuin's Carrier bag of fiction (Ives even mentions LeGuin in her Acknowledgements), and part of me loves that. My issue was that some of the pieces in this particular bag didn't interest me at all. Some were clever, I guess, but I found myself skimming, trying to get to the point of them. I think if they'd been shorter, they might have been more effective, but those pieces made up the bulk of the novel and it was just too much. By the time I got back to Erin's story, I'd forgotten most of the players, and stopped caring.

Trying to piece how the stories fit into the protagonist's life was an interesting puzzle (although I sometimes had no idea, probably because they were so long and digressive, so I was skimming.) When I saw how they fit I was reengaged, those Aha! moments that make fiction fun. But was the novel enjoyable as a whole? I guess I'd say as a whole, no. But the half I enjoyed made the novel worth reading. Ives is very clever, her writing is often funny and very smart, so in the end I guess I'm glad I read it, but I'm not sure who I'd recommend this to.

As I write this, I'm doing an escape room themed advent calendar with my daughter...Several doors holding several puzzles, a story based around them. The story is very fragmented, as these stories tend to be, and neither of us care what will happen next, but the puzzles themselves are fun, though they only fit the story loosely. Sorry for the weird metaphor, but that's a pretty pt comparison. I'm giving it 3.5 stars, 2 for the story itself, but rounded way up for the inventiveness and audaciousness and bits of brilliance.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Life Is Everywhere is experimental art wrapped up and disguised as contemporary literary fiction. More concept than novel, it took me some time to get into its groove, but once I did, it was a full immersion & I spent my entire weekend absorbed in its nearly 500-page fever dream.
 
Thinking about what this book is “about,” I really don’t know! It’s split into semi-connected sections, each somehow related to the life of Erin Adamo, a 30-something grad student at N.Y.U. recontextualizing (seemingly every event of it, without editing) a life of victimhood through the lens of an imminent divorce she refuses to accept while also realizing she wants it to happen.
 
The novel starts off as a meandering stream of consciousness, jumping around, inhabiting the inner thoughts of whoever is currently speaking, so you’re reading the minds of multiple people as they converse with (or around) each other – yes, this was confusing, but I also loved how the author played with this idea of the unreliable narrator in real-time? Can two totally separate realities exist at the same time if each person sees their version as truth? The initial grad school setting and the minor scandal that begins the story (if there even is a ‘story’ here in the traditional sense) was as funny as it was maddening, stewing in academic pretension and self-importance.
 
It reminded me a bit of Jennifer Eagen’s A Visit From the Goon Squad, in its switching of perspectives and multi-media approach (here, we have multiple, unrelated manuscripts spliced throughout, pages “left intentionally blank,” and even an unpaid ConEd Bill). I had to pause and ask myself if I was smart enough to read this book multiple times, which is not usually the sign of a good book, but this was interesting enough to get away with it.