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Machine
A haunting story of guilt and blame in the wake of a drowning, the first novel by the author of
Spectacle
Susan Steinberg’s first novel, Machine, is a dazzling and innovative leap forward for a writer whose most recent book, Spectacle, gained her a rapturous following. Machine revolves around a group of teenagers—both locals and wealthy out-of-towners—during a single summer at the shore. Steinberg captures the pressures and demands of this world in a voice that effortlessly slides from collective to singular, as one girl recounts a night on which another girl drowned. Hoping to assuage her guilt and evade a similar fate, she pieces together the details of this tragedy, as well as the breakdown of her own family, and learns that no one, not even she, is blameless.
A daring stylist, Steinberg contrasts semicolon-studded sentences with short lines that race down the page. This restless approach gains focus and power through a sharply drawn narrative that ferociously interrogates gender, class, privilege, and the disintegration of identity in the shadow of trauma. Machine is the kind of novel—relentless and bold—that only Susan Steinberg could have written.
Susan Steinberg’s first novel, Machine, is a dazzling and innovative leap forward for a writer whose most recent book, Spectacle, gained her a rapturous following. Machine revolves around a group of teenagers—both locals and wealthy out-of-towners—during a single summer at the shore. Steinberg captures the pressures and demands of this world in a voice that effortlessly slides from collective to singular, as one girl recounts a night on which another girl drowned. Hoping to assuage her guilt and evade a similar fate, she pieces together the details of this tragedy, as well as the breakdown of her own family, and learns that no one, not even she, is blameless.
A daring stylist, Steinberg contrasts semicolon-studded sentences with short lines that race down the page. This restless approach gains focus and power through a sharply drawn narrative that ferociously interrogates gender, class, privilege, and the disintegration of identity in the shadow of trauma. Machine is the kind of novel—relentless and bold—that only Susan Steinberg could have written.
160 pages, Hardcover
First published August 20, 2019
45 people are currently reading
2141 people want to read
About the author
Susan Steinberg
37 books38 followersSusan Steinberg is an American writer. She is the author of the short story collections Hydroplane, The End of Free Love, and Spectacle. Her stories have appeared in McSweeney's, Conjunctions, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere, and she was the recipient of a 2012 Pushcart Prize. She has a BFA in Painting from Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She teaches at the University of San Francisco.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 130 reviews
September 24, 2020
A girl is dead. She died by drowning at night while the rich kids kept partying on around her. This event is one of many that make the main character’s summer one that chances everything about her life. Still, the dead girl is incidental to the central narrative, even though it grounds the book as main cannot seem to see outside her own head. Set during the summer in a coastal town, this book deals with trauma and privilege and guilt and toxic masculinity.
The book is told mostly in short, fragmented sentences, seperated from each other by semi-colons – and for me this prose choice made the book compulsively readable and stronger than it would have otherwise been. I am a sucker for interesting stylistic choices and for books told unchronologically – which this was, going backward and forward in time, talking about things that happened or that could have happened or that might still happen. This is not a book for everyone – but it was very much my kind of thing. The characters are all deeply, deeply unlikable and as we stay closely in the unnamed narrator’s head, nobody except for her is fully fleshed out. The book remains vague but purposefully so – for me this worked because I always felt like the author knew what she was doing. I trusted her to lead me through the labyrinthian narrative and I thought she stuck the landing in a way that made this a very satisfying reading experience.
Content warnings: death by drowning, drug abuse, underage drinking, sexual assault, domestic abuse, psychological abuse
I received an ARC of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog.
The book is told mostly in short, fragmented sentences, seperated from each other by semi-colons – and for me this prose choice made the book compulsively readable and stronger than it would have otherwise been. I am a sucker for interesting stylistic choices and for books told unchronologically – which this was, going backward and forward in time, talking about things that happened or that could have happened or that might still happen. This is not a book for everyone – but it was very much my kind of thing. The characters are all deeply, deeply unlikable and as we stay closely in the unnamed narrator’s head, nobody except for her is fully fleshed out. The book remains vague but purposefully so – for me this worked because I always felt like the author knew what she was doing. I trusted her to lead me through the labyrinthian narrative and I thought she stuck the landing in a way that made this a very satisfying reading experience.
Content warnings: death by drowning, drug abuse, underage drinking, sexual assault, domestic abuse, psychological abuse
I received an ARC of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog.
April 10, 2019
This book doesn't come out until August but I read it early because I belong to the Graywolf galley club. They sent it with a beach ball, and I felt like reading beachy reads while in the low country.
The entire story is told by a young preteen/teenage girl who was around when a local girl drowned. With very few full sentences, most chapters are poetic fragments with many semicolons, leaving the reader with the duty of unraveling the truth.
The entire story is told by a young preteen/teenage girl who was around when a local girl drowned. With very few full sentences, most chapters are poetic fragments with many semicolons, leaving the reader with the duty of unraveling the truth.
September 16, 2019
This was an interesting book, told in an experimental style, which was cool. Sometimes I struggled with how fast everything moves in this novel - the prose is actually set up like poetry for the most part and the narration is often paced in that hyper-accelerated way that the unnamed protagonist feels things through her drug and alcohol addled mind. Even when she is slowing down time because of the seriousness or darkness of a certain feeling or event, the formatting still flows so quickly you’re forced, sometimes, to reread things multiple times. Steinberg’s choice to leave each and every character unnamed also doesn’t help with keeping track of things. But the story is pretty spot on in it’s delivery of story about overly privileged teens running desperately wild at the end of a summer in the town where their families own beaches homes. It’s about their loud and quiet desperation and how everyone of them is falling apart in their own way, and it’s kind of like watching “The Edge of Seventeen” but a hundred times darker and without the Hollywood happy ending. And I’m interested in these kinds of stories, but the inconsistent formatting and the super clichéd father, made it hard for me to like it more. I also had a difficult time with the mother being characterized over and over as weak just because she doesn’t stand up for herself more or try to put her husband in check more - even though every character explains how abusive the father is to everyone but particularly his wife. So I felt the treatment of the mother was unjustified even through the perspective of a pretentious rich girl. And while the book is advertised as a commentary on gender, class, and privilege it should also be said that these commentaries are specific to gender, class, and privilege as it relates to White Americans. Overall, I‘m not rushing out the door to recommend this to anybody but I also wouldn’t discourage anyone from reading it. If anything I would encourage reading it for the way gender is represented and played with here.
September 7, 2019
Like, the idea was good;
it had potential;
but I find it pretentious you know;
even if the writing is pretty good;
to use grammatical affectations;
all;
through;
your;
book
This was jumbled, and not in an interesting way. Mostly unoriginal in content, and honestly I'm STILL fucking bored of rich teenage girls bratting about, so I absolutely don't care when they do a lot of drugs and are very sad about their horrible privileged lives. Gag me with a silver spoon. IF YOU WILL lolol
it had potential;
but I find it pretentious you know;
even if the writing is pretty good;
to use grammatical affectations;
all;
through;
your;
book
This was jumbled, and not in an interesting way. Mostly unoriginal in content, and honestly I'm STILL fucking bored of rich teenage girls bratting about, so I absolutely don't care when they do a lot of drugs and are very sad about their horrible privileged lives. Gag me with a silver spoon. IF YOU WILL lolol
October 5, 2019
Perhaps experimental works just aren't for me. I still believe that communicating the story is the first job for a novelist. When playing with technical strategies, and punctuation, and formatting becomes the focus, a book misses the point for me. This is a brief (149 pages, lots of white space) story, told by an unnamed teenage girl about her family's summer(s) at the shore. They're rich, awful people, the epitome of privilege. The summer in question, their family falls apart and another teen girl drowns. The act of explaining is really what the book is about. But I'm old-fashioned enough that story, plot, and structure should serve the novel, not become a by-product of narrative experimentation. Not for me.
October 1, 2019
This is such an unusual novel. There are so many reasons for me to resist and not relate to this short work of fiction, and yet I felt very involved and stimulated while reading it. If you are looking for likable characters, a fluid narrative, a somewhat clear path with events that tell a clear story, then this is certainly not the book for you. However, if you are looking for something that is not the same old, same old, that is visceral, raw, feminist, and universal, then there is much for you here.
Most of this novel is written in sentences that end in semi-colons, with a few chapters where they end in periods (I for the life of me could not figure out why). The sentences are short and there are many non-sequitur passages. The novel is written from the perspective of a privileged teenage girl who is spending the summer at a seashore with her totally dysfunctional family. None of the characters are named, all going by such titles as "the girl," "my brother," "the guy." A young local girl (class distinction is dealt with throughout this short novel) becomes friends with the narrator. Several times she is termed "a knockout". She somehow drowns one day during a get together of young people on a jetty. The novel eventually parses through what led up to this event and who, if anyone, was responsible for it.
In the process, the girl watches as her father cheats on her mother and her brother becomes a juvenile delinquent. She escapes by thinking about the universe and the billions and billions of stars and planets out there. She herself does many questionable things such as sleeping with boys she doesn't know very well and stealing. The concept of teenage angst and growing up as a girl in a boys (and man's) world is explored here, as is the general fear of growing up. I felt that the author did a fabulous job of addressing these issues, which is what made the novel for me.
I would assume that some readers will have problems with a narrator who is essentially a spoiled brat. Yet there is a lot for her to complain about. If you have seen the movie The Squid and the Whale, it may give you some idea of what this girl is going through. And also, it may not be completely clear what actually did happen on that jetty--was the girl pushed, did she fall in, did she drown, was she saved? It is not completely clear what actually did happen, though I felt that I had a good idea by the end. So in the end, this is a creative, modern and captivating novel for the right reader.
Most of this novel is written in sentences that end in semi-colons, with a few chapters where they end in periods (I for the life of me could not figure out why). The sentences are short and there are many non-sequitur passages. The novel is written from the perspective of a privileged teenage girl who is spending the summer at a seashore with her totally dysfunctional family. None of the characters are named, all going by such titles as "the girl," "my brother," "the guy." A young local girl (class distinction is dealt with throughout this short novel) becomes friends with the narrator. Several times she is termed "a knockout". She somehow drowns one day during a get together of young people on a jetty. The novel eventually parses through what led up to this event and who, if anyone, was responsible for it.
In the process, the girl watches as her father cheats on her mother and her brother becomes a juvenile delinquent. She escapes by thinking about the universe and the billions and billions of stars and planets out there. She herself does many questionable things such as sleeping with boys she doesn't know very well and stealing. The concept of teenage angst and growing up as a girl in a boys (and man's) world is explored here, as is the general fear of growing up. I felt that the author did a fabulous job of addressing these issues, which is what made the novel for me.
I would assume that some readers will have problems with a narrator who is essentially a spoiled brat. Yet there is a lot for her to complain about. If you have seen the movie The Squid and the Whale, it may give you some idea of what this girl is going through. And also, it may not be completely clear what actually did happen on that jetty--was the girl pushed, did she fall in, did she drown, was she saved? It is not completely clear what actually did happen, though I felt that I had a good idea by the end. So in the end, this is a creative, modern and captivating novel for the right reader.
October 9, 2019
Steinberg ventures into a novel for the first time in her brilliant writing career and delivers a strange, fiery, and obliterated story of a broken family, teen drama, and a mysterious drowning. Not quite as strong as her (freakin awesome) short fiction, but still a reading experience that will make your brain pop.
August 27, 2019
My review for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: http://www.startribune.com/review-mac...
In an essay for Publishers Weekly, Susan Steinberg wrote, “I’ve learned that the term experimental makes some people uneasy. … And I guess I understand why there could be resistance; there often is to that which goes against our expectations. But in art, I often want my expectations, which are generally low, to be shattered.” Appropriately enough, she has spent her career defying categories and blurring genres.
Her first two story collections, “Hydroplane” and “The End of Free Love,” came out with Fiction Collective 2, “a hub for artistically adventurous, nontraditional fiction,” descriptors that certainly apply to Steinberg’s prose. In 2013, she published the collection “Spectacle” with Graywolf Press, which is now publishing her equally stylish and innovative debut novel, “Machine.”
The brief and propulsive story transpires over a single summer at “the shore,” a region of “weathered motels tilted into a road,” “beaten-up houses and couches on the lawns,” and “the jetty the locals hang out on.” Hinging on the tension between townies and affluent out-of-towners, the central event of the narrative is the drowning of a teenage girl, “a local girl; she was no one we knew well,” the narrator observes, adding “even my father said she was a knockout; but she wasn’t that bright, my father said; so there was no one to blame, he said, for her drowning but her.” Of course, the question immediately becomes who really was to blame, and the rest of the story meditates on that mystery.
Speaking sometimes in first person plural to suggest that “we’re part of a demographic; we’re girls who go to private schools; girls at the top of our classes; girls who stay at the shore all summer and become the stars of the shore” and other times in first person singular, the narration builds a dreamlike atmosphere of repetition and variation, desire and obsession.
The semicolon is one of the most sophisticated yet poorly understood pieces of punctuation. Used to link two independent but related clauses, the semicolon allows for a distinctive complexity in a sentence’s meaning and rhythm. A prolific and graceful user of this oft-avoided punctuation mark, Steinberg employs it to lyrical and layered effect: “but there’s no point in building her character here;/no point in building the perfect girl you always want;/so here’s any girl holding her shoes;/any girl looking like some kind of ghost.”
Steinberg has a BFA in painting, and visually she employs ample white space, line breaks and fragments intermixed with more typically formatted prose. The resulting short statements stab straight to the existential revelations of growing up: “I mean nothing is going to save you.//And can you even save yourself.”
In an essay for Publishers Weekly, Susan Steinberg wrote, “I’ve learned that the term experimental makes some people uneasy. … And I guess I understand why there could be resistance; there often is to that which goes against our expectations. But in art, I often want my expectations, which are generally low, to be shattered.” Appropriately enough, she has spent her career defying categories and blurring genres.
Her first two story collections, “Hydroplane” and “The End of Free Love,” came out with Fiction Collective 2, “a hub for artistically adventurous, nontraditional fiction,” descriptors that certainly apply to Steinberg’s prose. In 2013, she published the collection “Spectacle” with Graywolf Press, which is now publishing her equally stylish and innovative debut novel, “Machine.”
The brief and propulsive story transpires over a single summer at “the shore,” a region of “weathered motels tilted into a road,” “beaten-up houses and couches on the lawns,” and “the jetty the locals hang out on.” Hinging on the tension between townies and affluent out-of-towners, the central event of the narrative is the drowning of a teenage girl, “a local girl; she was no one we knew well,” the narrator observes, adding “even my father said she was a knockout; but she wasn’t that bright, my father said; so there was no one to blame, he said, for her drowning but her.” Of course, the question immediately becomes who really was to blame, and the rest of the story meditates on that mystery.
Speaking sometimes in first person plural to suggest that “we’re part of a demographic; we’re girls who go to private schools; girls at the top of our classes; girls who stay at the shore all summer and become the stars of the shore” and other times in first person singular, the narration builds a dreamlike atmosphere of repetition and variation, desire and obsession.
The semicolon is one of the most sophisticated yet poorly understood pieces of punctuation. Used to link two independent but related clauses, the semicolon allows for a distinctive complexity in a sentence’s meaning and rhythm. A prolific and graceful user of this oft-avoided punctuation mark, Steinberg employs it to lyrical and layered effect: “but there’s no point in building her character here;/no point in building the perfect girl you always want;/so here’s any girl holding her shoes;/any girl looking like some kind of ghost.”
Steinberg has a BFA in painting, and visually she employs ample white space, line breaks and fragments intermixed with more typically formatted prose. The resulting short statements stab straight to the existential revelations of growing up: “I mean nothing is going to save you.//And can you even save yourself.”
April 6, 2021
Generally a very enjoyable book which somewhat suffers from taking itself too seriously. I adored Steinberg's use of prose and manipulation of rhythm throughout, often forcing you to mirror the racing thoughts and quiet considerations of the protagonist. However, at times it felt quite heavy handed in its dishing out of 'deep' metaphors and observations, and the constant use of "fucked up" and other 'young' colloquialisms was overbearing and felt quite forced.
May 5, 2020
Wow wow wow. This book felt like a revelation. The prose are so cuttingly true, so deeply felt, and so blithely off the cuff. Steinberg captures an American lexicon I haven’t seen captured before, almost a new form of thought. And to top it off, there’s some incredibly trenchant class/gender commentary that’s never pedantic but also doesn’t shy away from making clear-eyed moral arguments.
June 25, 2025
2.5 stars
book club pick
this story is a cliche and not uncommon and i can recognize that some of the decisions the author made about the novel helped to convey a common story, but ultimately i wasn’t that impressed with what the story was. i also think this book could have been about 50 pages shorter. additionally, i became aware that some of the chapters were published as essays/short stories and i think i could have appreciated those as standalones much more than the novel.
book club pick
this story is a cliche and not uncommon and i can recognize that some of the decisions the author made about the novel helped to convey a common story, but ultimately i wasn’t that impressed with what the story was. i also think this book could have been about 50 pages shorter. additionally, i became aware that some of the chapters were published as essays/short stories and i think i could have appreciated those as standalones much more than the novel.
September 20, 2024
Pretentious, one-dimensional, and, ultimately, forgettable.
June 24, 2025
i can tell this was written from the teenage girl™️ perspective because it was all over the place
July 24, 2024
Ummmm I didn’t rlly know what was going on I wish I was cool and alternative and intelligent and witty enough to understand this prose….. but to Bffr I didn’t really care at all to know what was happening.
Rich girl, mental illness, Hampton summer, who cares.
Rich girl, mental illness, Hampton summer, who cares.
August 31, 2021
Really quick read. I thought the experimental writing would bother me or be too difficult to parse, but it wasn’t. My sense of the author’s decision to write it how she did was that she wanted it to feel close to stream of consciousness, which I think was effective.
This book covers sexism and class in particular, but sometimes you have to read the subtext to understand that.
The narrator’s parents are definitely cliches, but I get the sense that that’s because this is a teen girl’s perspective on them. Her parents are flat characters to her. I don’t think we’re supposed to think she’s being fair to her mother.
I’m not sure in the end about what happened. Given the scene of intense anger from her brother, it seems possible he murdered the girl. But it’s just as likely to me that she drowned from neglect. I think this one might be even more interesting on a reread, I might understand more.
It’s definitely a book of privilege, and definitely White privilege. It sort of interrogates that, but maybe not enough? I’d have to give it a reread to consider that, which I might since it’s so short.
This book covers sexism and class in particular, but sometimes you have to read the subtext to understand that.
The narrator’s parents are definitely cliches, but I get the sense that that’s because this is a teen girl’s perspective on them. Her parents are flat characters to her. I don’t think we’re supposed to think she’s being fair to her mother.
I’m not sure in the end about what happened. Given the scene of intense anger from her brother, it seems possible he murdered the girl. But it’s just as likely to me that she drowned from neglect. I think this one might be even more interesting on a reread, I might understand more.
It’s definitely a book of privilege, and definitely White privilege. It sort of interrogates that, but maybe not enough? I’d have to give it a reread to consider that, which I might since it’s so short.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 16, 2020
This may be a great story, but the teacher in me could not get over the fact that it was paragraph after paragraph of choppy sentences broken up by semi-colons. No periods. It made me feel disjointed and tired after reading it for just a short time. It was such a short book that I thought I'd be able to read it in a one sitting (maybe two) but I just couldn't get into the flow of the book because I didn't feel like there was one. And maybe this was the point... the youth in the story were very manic and chaotic and way into fun/partying/danger. Perhaps the text was meant to reflect that. I may try again at a later time when I am in a more "artsy" mood and can appreciate the way the sentences reflect the mood of the story. But right now, I just want to get lost in a gripping book and this was not hitting me as being that book.
July 9, 2020
The way "Machine" is written won't be for everyone, it is a long, teenage stream of consciousness where every little thought in the main protagonists head comes out on the page- from the mundane to the sublime to the ridiculous- so if you are married to the idea of a straightforward narrative with grammar and punctuation rules fully followed you probably won't like this.
It took me a few pages for the way this story unfolds to kick in but once it did I was hooked. It is not a long book and it flew past me, giving a snapshot view of the lives going on within it, at a time where a peculiar grief has settled in.
It's a difficult novel to describe and it's one of those where reader interpretations will have a heavy influence on what you take from it so I'll refrain from trying to give you plot details. Suffice to say it is compelling, involving and really very clever.
I like a novel that pushes the boundaries of how a story is told especially when there's a distinct lack of the pretentious as is the case here, so Machine settled into my psyche with a quiet meditative sense of melancholy. For that reason I recommend it. Especially if you are looking for something a bit different.
It took me a few pages for the way this story unfolds to kick in but once it did I was hooked. It is not a long book and it flew past me, giving a snapshot view of the lives going on within it, at a time where a peculiar grief has settled in.
It's a difficult novel to describe and it's one of those where reader interpretations will have a heavy influence on what you take from it so I'll refrain from trying to give you plot details. Suffice to say it is compelling, involving and really very clever.
I like a novel that pushes the boundaries of how a story is told especially when there's a distinct lack of the pretentious as is the case here, so Machine settled into my psyche with a quiet meditative sense of melancholy. For that reason I recommend it. Especially if you are looking for something a bit different.
June 11, 2020
"I wanted a force to come in, already, and upset it; I'd been secretly holding on, I admit, to the hope of this force coming in; not an asteroid force or a black hole force; but the slightest shred of holy; some shred of belief that everything would be revealed; that the world was something conceivable; a linear path directed toward some good; but there were more celebrity suicides; and noncelebrity suicides; and more explosion and more expansion; how could you not overthink it" (36)
A hot rich white girl falls apart under the stars, gets knocked out of orbit, one summer at the beach. Razor sharp feminist voice, like poetry that seriously cuts.
A hot rich white girl falls apart under the stars, gets knocked out of orbit, one summer at the beach. Razor sharp feminist voice, like poetry that seriously cuts.
June 24, 2020
I thought this was excellent in a very weird way that I'm not sure I even understand, but I'm very glad I read it and really enjoyed it.
It's an interesting story that announces the local girl dying early on and then has the narrator detailing her relationships through the rest of the story. Details of the death are uncovered throughout. The brother is an interesting character. The father is terrible. The mother is absent. There locals are totally disregarded but are important characters to the story and the narrator.
I could see this being a movie, but I liked it more reading it and imagining all the characters myself.
The "experimental" writing took a few pages to get used to but I think it actually worked really well with the narrator and what I thought of her.
It's an interesting story that announces the local girl dying early on and then has the narrator detailing her relationships through the rest of the story. Details of the death are uncovered throughout. The brother is an interesting character. The father is terrible. The mother is absent. There locals are totally disregarded but are important characters to the story and the narrator.
I could see this being a movie, but I liked it more reading it and imagining all the characters myself.
The "experimental" writing took a few pages to get used to but I think it actually worked really well with the narrator and what I thought of her.
May 31, 2022
This is exceptionally clever writing and I always enjoy a book that is different from the norm, but the story didn't captivate me the way it has captivated others. Nevertheless, you should read it. Maybe I wasn't ready for an angry book. It's still a great read because of how it's written and I promise you'll find her style interesting!
Read
May 26, 2020DNF. The writing style did not work for me at all.
February 17, 2022
i get the story. but how it’s written is honestly stupid.
January 7, 2023
< 2023: book 2/75 >
Interesting story premise but the writing just threw me off and at often times confused me.
Interesting story premise but the writing just threw me off and at often times confused me.
June 9, 2025
woww actually incredible I have never read anything like this
August 25, 2019
Steinberg's first novel could be compared to a book-length poem, with its unusual language, punctuation and circular storytelling. Her writing is gorgeous and haunting, as always, though in this form, it was sometimes a little difficult to hold everything until the end, especially as it looped back on itself. The story is told and then untold countless times as the reader is left to interpret where the truth, if anywhere, resides.
March 21, 2025
She said she was going to tell us what had happened and never really did.
August 6, 2022
My giving this book three stars does not mean that I think it is bad or boring, it just wasn't for me. I read it in one day. I struggled to get into it, and struggled to finish the last 40 pages. I really do appreciate the authors talent- it is strikingly evident throughout the whole book, but the writing style just was not my cup of tea. It is very experimental though, which I like and appreciate. I did find it tricky to understand the main plot. The clear fragmented subplots were understandable, but the main plot of the book, the drowning, I think was very hard to follow.
April 29, 2022
If someone asked me what this book was about i couldn't tell them, i don't even know if i fully understood what it was about and what happened, but i absolutely loved it. I think this has made it onto my list of favourite books of all time!
I went into this book blind, not knowing the style in which it was written, almost like poetry. At first i didn't know if this would affect my enjoyment as i wasn’t used to this format for an actual novel with plot. However, the writing was the most beautiful thing i have ever read and i was completely enthralled from beginning to end. I cannot even describe the writing...it was hauntingly beautiful and darkly captivating.
The writing punched me in the gut and hit me hard and i felt like i related so much at the same time as feeling like i was reading something otherworldly. I still feel so fascinated after finishing it and as though i have experienced something i have never experienced before.
I went into this book blind, not knowing the style in which it was written, almost like poetry. At first i didn't know if this would affect my enjoyment as i wasn’t used to this format for an actual novel with plot. However, the writing was the most beautiful thing i have ever read and i was completely enthralled from beginning to end. I cannot even describe the writing...it was hauntingly beautiful and darkly captivating.
The writing punched me in the gut and hit me hard and i felt like i related so much at the same time as feeling like i was reading something otherworldly. I still feel so fascinated after finishing it and as though i have experienced something i have never experienced before.
March 1, 2019
I received this advance copy from Graywolf Galley Club. The writing format is unusual; sort of prose-poetry, but it works.
The 149-page story takes place in a resort community where there are the townies and the wealthy part-timers. The teens occupy themselves with alcohol, drugs, and sex, while parents let it happen. The narrator is focused on an incident where a local girl drowned during a night of partying. She rehashes her own involvement with the party crowd while trying to determine where the blame lies.
This reading experience reminded me of "Ohio," another story of a lost generation of teenage partiers.
This story doesn't appeal to my taste in reading, or that of my book group. Maybe it is meant for a younger generation.
The 149-page story takes place in a resort community where there are the townies and the wealthy part-timers. The teens occupy themselves with alcohol, drugs, and sex, while parents let it happen. The narrator is focused on an incident where a local girl drowned during a night of partying. She rehashes her own involvement with the party crowd while trying to determine where the blame lies.
This reading experience reminded me of "Ohio," another story of a lost generation of teenage partiers.
This story doesn't appeal to my taste in reading, or that of my book group. Maybe it is meant for a younger generation.
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