Dreams Under Glass

by Anca L. Szilagyi

As the economy collapses around her in 2008 New York City, recent art school graduate Binnie takes a job as a paralegal to pay the bills. As her art projects languish on the back burner, she begins to obsessively imagine her daily grind expressed in unsettling and sometimes violent dioramas. Somehow, someday, she’ll find the time to construct them. In the meantime, she’ll walk this unsatisfying tightrope between financial stability and the life of a working artist.

But after a shocking and surreal death occurs at the law firm, Binnie wonders if her frustration is pushing her darkest imaginings into life.

264 pages, Paperback

Published September 27, 2022

About the author

Anca Szilagyi is the author of Daughters of the Air, which Shelf Awareness called "a striking debut from a writer to watch." The Seattle Review of Books named Daughters of the Air a favorite novel of 2017, calling it "a creation of unearthly talents." Dreams Under Glass, her second novel, was called "a novel for our modern times" by Buzzfeed Books. Her short fiction appears in Gastronomica, Fairy Tale Review, Washington City Paper, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction appears in Orion Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, Salon, The Rumpus, Jewish in Seattle, and on the Ploughshares blog. She was awarded grants and fellowships from 4Culture, Made at Hugo House, and Jack Straw and is the inaugural winner of the Artist Trust / LaSalle Storyteller Award. The Stranger hailed Anca as one of the "fresh new faces in Seattle fiction" and "a fantastic magical realist." Originally from Brooklyn, she has lived in Montreal, Seattle, and now Chicago.

Reviews

[Staci Greason · Rating 5 out of 5]

An artist is a person living in the world trying to make sense of living in the world as an artist.

Seeing art in the mundane is Binnie, the main character in this darkly beautiful novel, who visualizes while working as a paralegal so that she can afford Manhattan rent. An artist struggling with a day job isn't new literary territory, but in Anca Szilagyi's telling of it, it feels new.

Szilagyi's skilled prose is rich, colorful, and darkly surreal. Specific details merge in dreamlike form to create a full story. Astonishingly, much in the way that found pieces in a Joseph Cornell shadowbox somehow come together to create a whole story.

Also, the blending of magic realism with stark reality in this novel hits just the right spot. A completely satisfying read.

[Zara Stone · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s a magical realism like quality to this carefully plotted novel, the writing electric on the page. The attention to detail is breathtaking, the characters alive on the page. The protagonist Binnie lives in New York, a space that’s familiar and equally has never been so well observed, so much gravity placed in every elevator ride and awkward interaction she experiences. The lyrical constellations of “legal loopholes” her job entails documenting— she’s an unwilling paralegal and wannabe artist— leads to a mental escape of increasingly bizarre dioramas. This is a world where phone obsessed friends “sync with their surroundings” and a lack of surprise can be soul crushing. A clever depiction of trying to stay true to one’s self whilst also surviving.

[Greg Zimmerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an entertaining, smart novel about everyday life colliding with the time, motivation, ability, and desire to make art. But also about how inspiration for art comes from everyday life: A paradox?

Binnie is a slightly neurotic, mid-20s artist living in NYC, but working as a paralegal to make ends meet. Things begin to unravel for her professionally and creatively (at the same time they're unraveling for much of the country in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis). But we root for Binnie, and really hope she'll pull it together. Will she?

I got to meet Anca and hear her read a few weeks ago. She's a lovely person and a talented writer. Give this under-the-radar novel a shot!

[Kris Waldherr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this for an endorsement—as always, Szilágyi’s prose is sublime! DREAMS UNDER GLASS is a waking dream of a book. Anca Szilágyi’s startlingly gorgeous novel interweaves the tale of a wistful young artist-turned-paralegal with the mysterious, nocturnal art of Joseph Cornell. It’s Szilágyi doing what she does best: sublime language laced with stunningly original imagery and mordant wit. This one is going to stay with me for a long time.

[Isla McKetta · Rating 5 out of 5]

This engrossing book took me back to the early struggles of breaking through myself to get to the art. It sometimes personally painful to read, but it was beautifully imagined and I think it will help me build compassion for my younger self (someday).

[David McMurray · Rating 5 out of 5]

A compelling coming of age novel, set against the backdrop of the Bernie Madoff investment scandal in 2008, about a young artist who is trying to find her voice as an artist as she navigates the tension between the needs of her art, and the strategy she’s chosen to finance the time necessary to make the art, without allowing the means to that end to become the end in itself.

[Rebecca Rolland · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was fascinated by the mystery of this work--both the actual mystery and the psychological one. In the character of Binnie, Szilagyi has developed such a wonderfully sarcastic/sardonic voice that carries the plot. The questions of one's true artistic self and artistic yearnings, and the exploration of the dreamlike world of one of my favorite artists (Joseph Cornell), make this a book to read more than once! I especially appreciate the emotional expression of longing for a bigger, more artistic life within the daily grind. Definitely recommended.

[Julian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant novel that manages to be beautiful and dreamlike but also leave the reader feeling claustrophobic and anxious. It’s about a young artist trying to make it in New York, but it feels fresh and surprising and true.

[Sara Hosey · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a cool, original novel. Beautifully-written and atmospheric, Dreams Under Glass explores coming-of-age, the New York art world, and identity. A must read!

[Jennifer Pullen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A novel that blends the growth of an artist narrative with a thriller, and prose as sharp as a knife, to fascinating and riveting results.

[Marssie Mencotti · Rating 5 out of 5]

The more I think about this book, the more I love it. I had a hard time in the beginning because it is so perfectly placed in its generation of dreamy self indulgence and purposeful unawareness. But as I went through I recognized the malaise that affects Binnie and her inability to connect with anything in her life on anything more that a surface level. There's no love or hate - just tepid acceptance and ill defined worry. These are the emotions of twenty somethings that have no attachment to themselves, their families or their art. To be involved and actively planning their futures makes some of them feel unworthy. Binnie, the protagonist (?) is a big floppy child with nothing but anxiety and panic attacks to look forward to. A truly amazing voyage into the crushing ennui that comes from purposeful ignorance or ill-defined self-image. Anca Szilagyi is a brilliant writer.

[Jody Keisner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dreams Under Glass explores a young paralegal's struggle to realize her personal ambition/ artistic vision while also seeking financial stability. This is something most (all?) artists of various genres can relate to. A fever-dream of a novel with darker overtones, the prose is exquisite and alone worth the price of admission! Highly recommend. A perfect fall read.

[Brenna Lemieux · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dreamy delight of a book. One of those novels that grabs you like an ocean tide and carries you along through strange and delightful twists and turns. I love how grounded it is while also being wonderfully weird. Very excited to pick up Szilagyi's other book after having read this one.

[Barbara Barrow · Rating 5 out of 5]

A captivating, propulsive millennial novel! Szilagyi blends the harrowing world of the 2008 financial crisis with the fantastic, vivid, grotesque world of Binnie's dioramas, in a book that reads like part artist's novel, part workplace mystery.

[Morgan Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. Binnie is an aspiring artist working as a paralegal in New York in 2008. The demands of her day job threaten to drain her of time and energy to pursue her art. She tries to navigate both law office politics and the intimidating culture of the art world. Will she find the grit to continue when success or even encouragement feel impossibly elusive? It doesn't help that inappropriate photos mysteriously appear on her work computer and she gets vaguely threatening messages from an unknown email account.

This book is a page-turner. About two-thirds of the way through, an event occurs that caught me by surprise and I had to stop reading and go back to previous chapters and make sure that I had paid close enough attention.

Even though it flows easily, this book rewards careful reading. Do that, and you will enjoy it.

[Anca · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my book, so I may just be a wee bit biased, but I worked on it for 10+ years and think it's pretty great.

[Anna Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A complex, fascinating narration of life from within a young woman’s mind—an art school graduate yearning to create while trying to pay the bills as a paralegal during the 2008 financial crisis. Masterfully written—Szilagyi’s use of imagery and detail to evoke emotion and bring scene and character alive is original, compelling and provocative. Highly recommend.

[Bruce · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a tale of existential ennui in New York City late in the first decade of the 21st century. Binnie works at a small law firm as a legal assistant housed in the same office building as Bernie Madoff. Binnie really wants to be an artist. She wants to create art like that of Joseph Cornell, boxes filled with found objects that invite the viewer to imagine a story lurking behind the contents. Alas, Binnie wants to live in Manhattan living the life of an artist. But she is a person with ambition and vision with little practical ability to achieve her dream and a great deal of self-doubt. She imagines more than she makes. She’s shy to show what she does make even to her friend who works in an art gallery or her sympathetic impoverished boyfriend. Meanwhile she works in a hostile and intimidating workplace where porn shows up on her computer, where the bosses yell at her, and she’s sure a fellow office worker is out to get her fired.

Szilágyi’s prose is smooth, clearly stated, and filled with details. The tale is one of a downward spiral fueled by outward circumstances and the central character’s negative thinking and a climatic event without resolution. It very much reminded me of a literary classic that I also dislike, Madame Bovary, a well written novel of boring people coming to dismal ends. If you enjoy that sort of thing, don’t be put off by my low rating of Dreams Under Glass. It is no reflection on the skill of the author.

[Aggeliki Pelekidis · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I loved the most about this book was the writer’s ability to depict the main character’s thoughts and artistic imaginings in such an organic way with the MC’s daily existence. There’s also some great tension here coming through the MC precarious and unsatisfying employment with her artistic ambitions that I could relate to. Binnie is at a pivotal point in her development into an adult, trying to understand who she is and what she wants her future to consist of. A very enjoyable read!

[Јордан Kocevski) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting read, focused on what one is ready to do in order to live their dream life (as the title suggests).
A story about a young woman undertaking a low paid job, so she can achieve her dream and become an artist, this is story of so much more, a story of how one can be their own worst enemy, how our thoughts and doubts may lead us to wrong conclusions and bad decisions, and even worst: to torture us while we are unable to take action.