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The New Earth
A globe-spanning epic novel about a fractured New York family reckoning with the harms of the past and confronting humanity’s uncertain future, from award-winning author Jess Row
For fifteen years, the Wilcoxes have been a family in name only. Though never the picture of happiness, they once seemed like a typical white Jewish clan from the Upper West Side. But in the early 2000s, two events ruptured the relationships between them. First, Naomi revealed to her children that her biological father was actually Black. In the aftermath, college-age daughter Bering left home to become a radical peace activist in Palestine’s West Bank, where she was killed by an Israeli Army sniper.
Now, in 2018, Winter Wilcox is getting married, and her only demand is that her mother, father, and brother emerge from their self-imposed isolations and gather once more. After decades of neglecting personal and political wounds, each remaining family member must face their fractured history and decide if they can ever reconcile.
Assembling a vast chorus of voices and ideas from across the globe, Jess Row “explodes the saga from within—blows the roof off, so to speak, to let in politics, race, theory, and the narrative self-awareness that the form had seemed hell-bent on ignoring” (Jonathan Lethem). The New Earth is a commanding investigation of our deep and impossible desire to undo the injustices we have both inflicted and been forced to endure.
For fifteen years, the Wilcoxes have been a family in name only. Though never the picture of happiness, they once seemed like a typical white Jewish clan from the Upper West Side. But in the early 2000s, two events ruptured the relationships between them. First, Naomi revealed to her children that her biological father was actually Black. In the aftermath, college-age daughter Bering left home to become a radical peace activist in Palestine’s West Bank, where she was killed by an Israeli Army sniper.
Now, in 2018, Winter Wilcox is getting married, and her only demand is that her mother, father, and brother emerge from their self-imposed isolations and gather once more. After decades of neglecting personal and political wounds, each remaining family member must face their fractured history and decide if they can ever reconcile.
Assembling a vast chorus of voices and ideas from across the globe, Jess Row “explodes the saga from within—blows the roof off, so to speak, to let in politics, race, theory, and the narrative self-awareness that the form had seemed hell-bent on ignoring” (Jonathan Lethem). The New Earth is a commanding investigation of our deep and impossible desire to undo the injustices we have both inflicted and been forced to endure.
592 pages, Hardcover
First published March 28, 2023
123 people are currently reading
4013 people want to read
About the author
Jess Row
15 books67 followersJess Row is an American short story writer and novelist. He attended Yale University and later taught English in Hong Kong for two years before completing his M.F.A. at the University of Michigan in 2001.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 64 reviews
April 12, 2023
Audiobook….read by a full cast
…..21 hours and 21 minutes
I must be meshuggah…..
I listened to this 586 page novel usually around three, four, or more hours a day….
sometimes thinking it would never end —
but I continued to get sucked into the sweeping psychodrama …..
This was my first book by Jess Row.
I think it’s very fair to compare Jess Row to Jonathan Franzen. (just saying - ‘ Franzen’ knocks-off dozens of readers)….
but I enjoyed it …
(a little long with some parts less interesting than others),
but over all, I enjoyed the auxiliary characters, and the freshness of universal themes .
The Wilcox’s are a dysfunctional Jewish American family.
Everything under-the-earth in
“The New Earth” is up for grabs….
….a failing marriage,
….attempted suicide,
….a lesbian lover
….a monkish son in Nepal
….a pregnant daughter who is an immigration lawyer.
….a secret Black grandfather
….life in the West Bank with angry Israelis.
….an upcoming wedding (some of the funniest dialogue between brother and sister were around this wedding)…..
and …
….politics, legal issues, religion, class, race, sexuality, demographics, capitalism, immigration, family secrets, social complexities, etc.
Jess Row’s contemporary storytelling was best when the individual lives were personal, vivid and tragic.
Its deceptively funny ….
with an enjoyable casual tone — but it’s also a book to be taken seriously.
Not perfect -
but it’s good!!!
4 star rating.
…..21 hours and 21 minutes
I must be meshuggah…..
I listened to this 586 page novel usually around three, four, or more hours a day….
sometimes thinking it would never end —
but I continued to get sucked into the sweeping psychodrama …..
This was my first book by Jess Row.
I think it’s very fair to compare Jess Row to Jonathan Franzen. (just saying - ‘ Franzen’ knocks-off dozens of readers)….
but I enjoyed it …
(a little long with some parts less interesting than others),
but over all, I enjoyed the auxiliary characters, and the freshness of universal themes .
The Wilcox’s are a dysfunctional Jewish American family.
Everything under-the-earth in
“The New Earth” is up for grabs….
….a failing marriage,
….attempted suicide,
….a lesbian lover
….a monkish son in Nepal
….a pregnant daughter who is an immigration lawyer.
….a secret Black grandfather
….life in the West Bank with angry Israelis.
….an upcoming wedding (some of the funniest dialogue between brother and sister were around this wedding)…..
and …
….politics, legal issues, religion, class, race, sexuality, demographics, capitalism, immigration, family secrets, social complexities, etc.
Jess Row’s contemporary storytelling was best when the individual lives were personal, vivid and tragic.
Its deceptively funny ….
with an enjoyable casual tone — but it’s also a book to be taken seriously.
Not perfect -
but it’s good!!!
4 star rating.
April 4, 2023
4.5 stars. Mr. Tolstoy famously said, "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." This is yet another novel that illustrates that truism.
I was a huge fan of Mr. Row's debut novel, Your Face in Mine, and think of it often. It was a really intriguing book that dealt with the subject of race in a unique way. Mr. Row has also written non-fiction on the subject of race. It comes up again in The New Earth, but Row's latest is far broader in scope, with an equally bloated word count.
Bloated isn't a great sounding description, and the length of the book--at roughly 600 pages--and the impact it has on the novel's pacing is my biggest criticism of the novel. But there's a flip side to this expansiveness... This book is HUGELY ambitious, and it succeeds on a lot of levels. I seriously don't have the energy to try to corral this plot into a synopsis. In short, it's a study of an affluent, Jewish, Upper East Side New York family. Except, almost nothing I just said is true. Well, it is, but it's complicated. Are any of these people what they present themselves as? This is a profoundly dysfunctional family--in unusually fascinating ways. That's not typically my cup of tea, but I couldn't look away from these people.
But this story is so much bigger than the disintegration of an estranged, but loving, family. It's looking at the disintegration of cultures, nations, planets. I'm not exaggerating. It is, as I said, ambitious. And Mr. Row gives readers a lot to chew on. You may not like all of the characters. (Some of you won't like any of the characters.) You may get bogged down in the middle. Take a break, if you must. There is some effort required for this book, but I truly believe that the effort is rewarded. It is exceedingly rare for a book to take me more than a day to read. This one really did make me work, but I have a feeling that I'll be revisiting it in years to come, and I suspect that multiple readings will yield even richer rewards.
I was a huge fan of Mr. Row's debut novel, Your Face in Mine, and think of it often. It was a really intriguing book that dealt with the subject of race in a unique way. Mr. Row has also written non-fiction on the subject of race. It comes up again in The New Earth, but Row's latest is far broader in scope, with an equally bloated word count.
Bloated isn't a great sounding description, and the length of the book--at roughly 600 pages--and the impact it has on the novel's pacing is my biggest criticism of the novel. But there's a flip side to this expansiveness... This book is HUGELY ambitious, and it succeeds on a lot of levels. I seriously don't have the energy to try to corral this plot into a synopsis. In short, it's a study of an affluent, Jewish, Upper East Side New York family. Except, almost nothing I just said is true. Well, it is, but it's complicated. Are any of these people what they present themselves as? This is a profoundly dysfunctional family--in unusually fascinating ways. That's not typically my cup of tea, but I couldn't look away from these people.
But this story is so much bigger than the disintegration of an estranged, but loving, family. It's looking at the disintegration of cultures, nations, planets. I'm not exaggerating. It is, as I said, ambitious. And Mr. Row gives readers a lot to chew on. You may not like all of the characters. (Some of you won't like any of the characters.) You may get bogged down in the middle. Take a break, if you must. There is some effort required for this book, but I truly believe that the effort is rewarded. It is exceedingly rare for a book to take me more than a day to read. This one really did make me work, but I have a feeling that I'll be revisiting it in years to come, and I suspect that multiple readings will yield even richer rewards.
April 28, 2023
Let me start by saying that Jess Row is a terrific writer. Why the 3 out of 5 stars, then? This novel needs editing. Great portions of the last 2/3 of the novel need to be condensed, sharpened, or excised completley. You, dear reader, may disagree with my assessment. That's the great thing about the book community: we don't all like the same things, and that's what keeps it interesting.
My review: written as I read, which you can really tell, when the tone changes.
[First impression]:
My God. This novel is like the implosion of privilege told through metafiction. It's spectacular, tragic, dramatic, and riveting.
[And this was absolutely true for 200 pages.]
I had to admire the way the author eviscerates family relationships. It left me feeling strangely vindicated.
Every page is so smartly written. This story zips along with its relentless strengths of narrative, characters, and controlled chaos.
The author also effectively folds in pathos to the narrative, with frequent juxtapositions of the plight of immigrants as compared to other Americans, even those who are dedicated to helping them.
Equally impressive, he presents casual racism exactly as it occurs, complete with abject shock, but no pushback. The author is shaming us, in a way, for not speaking up to the microaggresser, not in defense of anyone standing there (no White Savior Complex, please) but rather because it offends our own decency, dignity, our very humanity.
The book is also very very funny. Because it's metafiction, the novel itself gets perturbed by its own agitated and melodramatic characters, which is humorous in itself.
And for a Novel (as an actual character commenting on the progression of events) which professes to hate metaphors, it makes copious use of them. The whole symbolic set of meanings of *accidents* alone permeates the story.
The humor is the main thing that kept me hooked to this story, well that and the crazy smart, antagonistic, linguistically gifted characters. There were times when I howled with laughter reading the overdramatic speechifying of each of them. That description by Naomi of what she imagined the wedding to be like completely slayed.
The character of Bering seems to occupy two roles: the personification of ambivalence, and as a plot device for all the others to bounce their guilt and grief off of.
The political life of these characters (and in this book, life is intrinsically political) is more complex than that to which I am accustomed. It is consistent with this scholarly brood, but it does require more close reading than we usually expect in family dramedies.
The meaning of the title NEW EARTH is more of an unfolding concept of possibility than a definition. But, such that it is, we do get an idea of it to roll around in our heads, about a third of the way into the novel.
This is also precisely when there is a revelation I just did not see coming, and it hit me like an earthquake felling a wall of bricks.
The symbolic metaphor the author chooses for this shocking scene is maybe a little over the top. Perhaps he is challenging the reader to see if we believe in any moral boundaries in fiction, or if fiction by definition should be able to go anywhere it wants to go, even or especially to the most uncomfortable places.
In every way possible, the author wants the reader to know how royally and completely screwed-up this beyond-dysfunctional family is. Call me convinced.
I mean, families have their problems, but this one is toxic with their secrecy, broken taboos, and relentless raving narcissism.
I felt like the middle of the book dragged. Sandy's story was not as interesting, and would have perhaps had more snap if Naomi had told most of it, or even if the novel had an omniscient narrator to tell his story or literally anyone else. Sandy is by far the most tedious storyteller.
The strongest parts of the book are the first 200 pages and the last 100 pages. The middle could use some editing and more of the sharp dialogue which lifts the rest of the story.
Even in grief, the self-centeredness and cruelty of this family is apparent, accentuated, even. The author does do justice to the struggle over borders and citizenship in the Israeli/Palestinian situation. He brings up some excellent questions and observations. Family members who are more obsessed with themselves than they are with their specific family tragedy, might be an apt reflection of the struggle of Israelis and Palestinians. And yes, it's hardly a binary problem, but I am not sure how else to refer to it. The important thing is that the family's unhealthy and counterproductive actions are quite like the larger struggle, in microcosm.
As much as I believe the book would benefit from editing and excising quite a bit, I also think that the revealed family secret isn't explored enough. It occupies space as a fairly minor subplot, with more attention at the end of the book than at any other time. The *unrevealed* [no spoilers] family secret is examined to death.
So, I had some problems with the book as a whole, but parts of it were amazingly brilliant, and I cannot imagine anyone else who could have written those passages. It was a mixed bag for me. I welcome your thoughts.
My review: written as I read, which you can really tell, when the tone changes.
[First impression]:
My God. This novel is like the implosion of privilege told through metafiction. It's spectacular, tragic, dramatic, and riveting.
[And this was absolutely true for 200 pages.]
I had to admire the way the author eviscerates family relationships. It left me feeling strangely vindicated.
Every page is so smartly written. This story zips along with its relentless strengths of narrative, characters, and controlled chaos.
The author also effectively folds in pathos to the narrative, with frequent juxtapositions of the plight of immigrants as compared to other Americans, even those who are dedicated to helping them.
Equally impressive, he presents casual racism exactly as it occurs, complete with abject shock, but no pushback. The author is shaming us, in a way, for not speaking up to the microaggresser, not in defense of anyone standing there (no White Savior Complex, please) but rather because it offends our own decency, dignity, our very humanity.
The book is also very very funny. Because it's metafiction, the novel itself gets perturbed by its own agitated and melodramatic characters, which is humorous in itself.
And for a Novel (as an actual character commenting on the progression of events) which professes to hate metaphors, it makes copious use of them. The whole symbolic set of meanings of *accidents* alone permeates the story.
The humor is the main thing that kept me hooked to this story, well that and the crazy smart, antagonistic, linguistically gifted characters. There were times when I howled with laughter reading the overdramatic speechifying of each of them. That description by Naomi of what she imagined the wedding to be like completely slayed.
The character of Bering seems to occupy two roles: the personification of ambivalence, and as a plot device for all the others to bounce their guilt and grief off of.
The political life of these characters (and in this book, life is intrinsically political) is more complex than that to which I am accustomed. It is consistent with this scholarly brood, but it does require more close reading than we usually expect in family dramedies.
The meaning of the title NEW EARTH is more of an unfolding concept of possibility than a definition. But, such that it is, we do get an idea of it to roll around in our heads, about a third of the way into the novel.
This is also precisely when there is a revelation I just did not see coming, and it hit me like an earthquake felling a wall of bricks.
The symbolic metaphor the author chooses for this shocking scene is maybe a little over the top. Perhaps he is challenging the reader to see if we believe in any moral boundaries in fiction, or if fiction by definition should be able to go anywhere it wants to go, even or especially to the most uncomfortable places.
In every way possible, the author wants the reader to know how royally and completely screwed-up this beyond-dysfunctional family is. Call me convinced.
I mean, families have their problems, but this one is toxic with their secrecy, broken taboos, and relentless raving narcissism.
I felt like the middle of the book dragged. Sandy's story was not as interesting, and would have perhaps had more snap if Naomi had told most of it, or even if the novel had an omniscient narrator to tell his story or literally anyone else. Sandy is by far the most tedious storyteller.
The strongest parts of the book are the first 200 pages and the last 100 pages. The middle could use some editing and more of the sharp dialogue which lifts the rest of the story.
Even in grief, the self-centeredness and cruelty of this family is apparent, accentuated, even. The author does do justice to the struggle over borders and citizenship in the Israeli/Palestinian situation. He brings up some excellent questions and observations. Family members who are more obsessed with themselves than they are with their specific family tragedy, might be an apt reflection of the struggle of Israelis and Palestinians. And yes, it's hardly a binary problem, but I am not sure how else to refer to it. The important thing is that the family's unhealthy and counterproductive actions are quite like the larger struggle, in microcosm.
As much as I believe the book would benefit from editing and excising quite a bit, I also think that the revealed family secret isn't explored enough. It occupies space as a fairly minor subplot, with more attention at the end of the book than at any other time. The *unrevealed* [no spoilers] family secret is examined to death.
So, I had some problems with the book as a whole, but parts of it were amazingly brilliant, and I cannot imagine anyone else who could have written those passages. It was a mixed bag for me. I welcome your thoughts.
February 7, 2023
Fascinating, sometimes ethereal, but too often bogged down by its own philosophizing and esotericism.
Like most of Row's work, I appreciated this more than I "liked" it.
Like most of Row's work, I appreciated this more than I "liked" it.
April 13, 2023
DNF - Life is too short to slog through this pretentious, dull doorstop.
May 7, 2023
TW: incest, family dysfunction, murder
*sigh* When will I learn to avoid the New York Times book section and its focus on bloviating white male authors? The Wilcox family is damaged and estranged after Naomi confessed that her father is a Black man despite living her life as a Jewish woman on the Upper West Side. Her marriage to Sandy is in name only and seems like it was an expectation as opposed to a loving covenant. Daughter Bering died as a radical peace activist in Palestine, Patrick is a former monk and current expat in Berlin. Winter is a pregnant immigration lawyer partnered with an undocumented man she decided to marry- without telling her partner. This book went on forever like a painful family dinner and made me thrilled that I don't know these people. Everyone is a gross cliche in the book, but Bering is the least intolerable. Perhaps that is because she's dead and is not living a pitiful life wracked with guilt and estrangement. I don't think I've given a book 2 stars thus far, way to go Jess Row!
*sigh* When will I learn to avoid the New York Times book section and its focus on bloviating white male authors? The Wilcox family is damaged and estranged after Naomi confessed that her father is a Black man despite living her life as a Jewish woman on the Upper West Side. Her marriage to Sandy is in name only and seems like it was an expectation as opposed to a loving covenant. Daughter Bering died as a radical peace activist in Palestine, Patrick is a former monk and current expat in Berlin. Winter is a pregnant immigration lawyer partnered with an undocumented man she decided to marry- without telling her partner. This book went on forever like a painful family dinner and made me thrilled that I don't know these people. Everyone is a gross cliche in the book, but Bering is the least intolerable. Perhaps that is because she's dead and is not living a pitiful life wracked with guilt and estrangement. I don't think I've given a book 2 stars thus far, way to go Jess Row!
September 20, 2023
I wanted to enjoy this but I mostly hated it. It was an expansive exploration of race, class, and family relationships: three children responding to their mother’s disclosure of being biracial, flipping the coming of age narrative into a coming undone. It is ambitious. There are a lot of plays with structure and narrative voice that I just didn’t have the patience for, as the characters are all unlikeable extremes who talk at each other and at the reader, while weaving in climate change, incest, the 2nd intifada, and Buddhism. I need to be more disciplined and stop reading books that take place on the Upper West Side or Park Slope
April 23, 2023
I really wanted to like this book but some of the primary characters were so narcissistic and unlikeable that I had to push myself to finish it. I listened to the audiobook and while the writing and narration were good, it was 21 hours that could have been shortened by eliminating some of the overlapping storylines that didn't really add to the story or its resolution.
March 22, 2023
The New Earth is a slowly moving large scale story. The Wilcoxes are completely estranged due to the revelation 18 years ago that their mother revealed to her adult children that their father was a Black man. Following this announcement, the eldest fled to Palestine to become a peace activist and was killed by a sniper.
In The 'New Earth, Winter, one of the surviving dauthers, has planned.a wedding and is requesting that her whole family reunite for the event. The family slowly begins to gather, reflecting on all of the wrongs they have experienced in life and from one another, all the while questioning if they can forgive. If you like sprawling stories, climate discussion and dysfunctional families, The New Earth is for you! #ecco #TheNewEarth #jessrow
In The 'New Earth, Winter, one of the surviving dauthers, has planned.a wedding and is requesting that her whole family reunite for the event. The family slowly begins to gather, reflecting on all of the wrongs they have experienced in life and from one another, all the while questioning if they can forgive. If you like sprawling stories, climate discussion and dysfunctional families, The New Earth is for you! #ecco #TheNewEarth #jessrow
April 17, 2023
The novel is wildly ambitious, overstuffed and at times both ponderous and pretentious, and its 500+ pages is still too short to adequately explore (or resolve) the surfeit of storylines and themes—but I was never bored or less than captivated by the over-the-top dysfunctional family at its heart and their many tragedies, foibles, weaknesses, and misadventures. Both stylistically and in its central plot, the novel is always interesting, boundary-pushing, and at times challenging. You have to work for it, and you may come away feeling not completely satisfied (too many loose ends for my taste)…but it will feel like a worthwhile accomplishment and investment of time and effort (for me, anyway).
April 26, 2023
There was a lot to like in this well-written, elegantly constructed novel of family dysfunction and big themes (racism, immigration, climate change, the Palestine/Israeli conflict), but the emotional payoff was lacking.
October 8, 2022
This is a pretty good story, although quite long, and I didn't always stay engaged. I suspect it could have been edited down a bit. Ironically, Row is a good story-teller, especially in the short story format (see his other work). I hope he continues to write more long form stuff.
Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!
Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!
April 24, 2023
I feel about this book the way so many felt about The Corrections -- I disliked all of the characters and kept wondering why I continued to read.
Read
May 1, 2023I don’t know how much I liked this. I do know that the audiobook was 21 hours. I do love me a sprawling family drama and this one is definitely sprawling, maybe even too sprawling for me. Lots of family secrets (some quite disturbing) and tragedy but maybe I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind for this, cuz I’m not, like, missing any of the characters since I finished, wondering what they’re up to lately… you know how it can be sometimes.
October 3, 2025
Novel about a Jewish family, the Wilcoxes, and their family drama (the mother didn't tell her children their grandfather was a different person than they thought until adulthood). One kid is gone, one kid has a weird medical problem, the other kid is an immigration lawyer who is unexpectedly pregnant.
So - at first I thought this was really good, but it just dragged on and became too much navel-gazing for me. Needed lots of editing.
So - at first I thought this was really good, but it just dragged on and became too much navel-gazing for me. Needed lots of editing.
May 30, 2023
a series of somewhat, sometimes, interesting, but mostly annoying, conversations between characters. not a very coherent plot or line connecting these stories. a very lazy and reckless attempt to discuss incest.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 16, 2023
I am not really sure what to say about this. At 500 plus pages was it a dysfunctional family novel (yes!) a climate novel (sort of) an Israel/ Palestine conflict novel?? I made it through all of this and appreciated some of the family struggles to be less dysfunctional. But really (slight spoiler) wtf with the incest storyline?? (And, btw if we are on spoilers, how is Patrick not dead??)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 6, 2024
Exhausting.
May 10, 2023
I am glad to have persevered with this book and pushed on to the end. I nearly didn't. Jess Row is trying to say a lot with this book. I mean, you could pick so many things out of this novel that could be thematic and worthy of discussion, but it's a bit overwhelming to choose. The book could be about where we find ourselves in the world's state of affairs after the T era, about how we as individuals are doing as the climate changes, about our personal lives and family relationships in this era. That's just a sample of what he gets at.
There are interjections about the novel he is writing, throughout, by the author, I suppose, or by some objective voice who is unidentified. I didn't focus on those interjections, however. They didn't seem to add up to much to me as I read. For example, there would be statements to the effect of, now is the part of the novel where you are being warmly embraced, or where you are being drawn in, or carried along, things of that nature. This did not do it for me, as a reader, it didn't really mean much. I suppose it is some meta challenge to the form. To inject reality into the fantasy. To make one pause. Perhaps for other students of fiction, they may be more intrigued by this structure.
There is a lot the author is trying to say about the political backdrop in which this story takes place. There is the story of the Upper West Side of New York dwelling Wilcox family and beyond to a cast that includes persons of Mexican, Tibetan, German, Israeli, and Palestinian nationalities, bringing in to the story the conflicts and history of those nations. And Naomi Wilcox, a mother of three, has Black heritage that she did not discover until she was in university and she waits to pass on this knowledge to her own children until they are adults.
Tying it all together is quite a feat and it's not an easy read in terms of a typical narrative telling of a story. It's not linear, it doesn't build, it jumps around. It's also not exactly easy to get through because some of the main characters are fairly unlikable. I did find, however, that there were enough in the cast to make up for the unlikable lot.
In the end, the novel does seem to come together plot wise, with a gathering toward the end, and it does have a lot of interesting things to say, things I think I will be thinking about for a time to come. The title of the book is significant, in many ways, suggesting a landscape that is in flux, and as it is hinted at in one part, coming for all of us, no matter what privileged position you might occupy by stature or by geography.
To give a sense of the things Row is saying, politically, in this book, here's one quote spoken by an older Mexican man with EU citizenship (Spain) to his American host, the host at that moment trying to egg on his guest to extend his visit to the U.S., from Maine to include a trip to New York City:
There are interjections about the novel he is writing, throughout, by the author, I suppose, or by some objective voice who is unidentified. I didn't focus on those interjections, however. They didn't seem to add up to much to me as I read. For example, there would be statements to the effect of, now is the part of the novel where you are being warmly embraced, or where you are being drawn in, or carried along, things of that nature. This did not do it for me, as a reader, it didn't really mean much. I suppose it is some meta challenge to the form. To inject reality into the fantasy. To make one pause. Perhaps for other students of fiction, they may be more intrigued by this structure.
There is a lot the author is trying to say about the political backdrop in which this story takes place. There is the story of the Upper West Side of New York dwelling Wilcox family and beyond to a cast that includes persons of Mexican, Tibetan, German, Israeli, and Palestinian nationalities, bringing in to the story the conflicts and history of those nations. And Naomi Wilcox, a mother of three, has Black heritage that she did not discover until she was in university and she waits to pass on this knowledge to her own children until they are adults.
Tying it all together is quite a feat and it's not an easy read in terms of a typical narrative telling of a story. It's not linear, it doesn't build, it jumps around. It's also not exactly easy to get through because some of the main characters are fairly unlikable. I did find, however, that there were enough in the cast to make up for the unlikable lot.
In the end, the novel does seem to come together plot wise, with a gathering toward the end, and it does have a lot of interesting things to say, things I think I will be thinking about for a time to come. The title of the book is significant, in many ways, suggesting a landscape that is in flux, and as it is hinted at in one part, coming for all of us, no matter what privileged position you might occupy by stature or by geography.
To give a sense of the things Row is saying, politically, in this book, here's one quote spoken by an older Mexican man with EU citizenship (Spain) to his American host, the host at that moment trying to egg on his guest to extend his visit to the U.S., from Maine to include a trip to New York City:
"It's extremely painful for me to be here. I wonder if you can appreciate that. I don't think United States citizens generally understand how despised they are by the rest of the world. The educated world, the observant world. I wonder if any of you are capable of hemispheric thinking, any kind of global awareness at all. And I don't count myself as a person who hates easily."That's kind of a smack you in the head not too subtle statement, granted. And there's this quote, which hints at another kind of "new earth", spoken during a wedding toast:
"You know yourselves so much better than I ever knew myself. We are witnessing such a shift in the scale of self-knowledge on this planet. God knows what's going to happen because of it."And this:
"...maybe the urge toward self-destruction manifests in all political systems, or projects, over time. Or all institutions, I don't know. But this is clearly what we're seeing in the U.S. right now, on every level. This is the age of willed, willful self-destruction."I'm not sure I've done any kind of justice to this book and what kind of read it is. It's a challenging read, not enjoyable in a conventional way, but I thought it was worth it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 13, 2023
Whew. I hate read a lot of this one. Maybe the most try-hard novel I’ve ever read? Every social issue is crammed in. Every pretentious stylistic tic: passages formatted like emails, passages formatted like Bible verse, stream of consciousness, referring to “the novel” as a sentient being. Some of the most unlikeable characters imaginable.
But I still wanted to finish it, somehow?
But I still wanted to finish it, somehow?
Read
December 15, 2023I'm gonna push through & finish this book, but holy hell. It's like eighteen novels in one, & one of them is about the novel itself becoming sentient & being very coy about its own shortcomings in being able to encapsulate the complexities of life, death, & philosophy within a single bound volume. Note to the novel, maybe you could have narrowed your focus down to just three of your Big Ideas at play here & then it wouldn't be so daunting. I'm only halfway through & we've already touched on suicide, pregnancy, divorce, late-in-life lesbianism, a big surprise involving race, physics, zen philosophy, Zionism, climate change, incest, state-sanctioned murder, whether or not the fact of racism reifies race as a construct & what that means for POC who can pass as white, & probably a whole lot of other things I'm forgetting to mention. At one point I actually thought to myself, "I don't think this book even wants to finish this book," which is maybe a sign that I shouldn't finish it either? It really feels like the author had ideas for like five different books scattered in different notebooks & Word files & just mashed them all together into this weird slurry & called it done.
I'm trying to read all 58 books long-listed for the 2024 Tournament of Books, & this, somewhat inexplicably, was one of them. So I'm going to try to finish. But note to the various lit people who put the ToB together every year: you don't have to include every Big Ideas book just because it's over 500 pages. Some books are long because they deserve to be long. Some books just need a damn editor.
I'm trying to read all 58 books long-listed for the 2024 Tournament of Books, & this, somewhat inexplicably, was one of them. So I'm going to try to finish. But note to the various lit people who put the ToB together every year: you don't have to include every Big Ideas book just because it's over 500 pages. Some books are long because they deserve to be long. Some books just need a damn editor.
April 4, 2023
This novel took some time for me to settle into; I suspect the e-book format made it more difficult than a hard copy would have been. But once I had figured out the shape and direction of the story-telling, Jess Row's honest and fresh writing proved a trustworthy guide as we wove a path among generations and family relationships navigating life's challenges.
I look forward to picking up the novel and revisiting these lives.
Many thanks to the publisher, Ecco Books, and NetGalley for an advance copy for review!
I look forward to picking up the novel and revisiting these lives.
Many thanks to the publisher, Ecco Books, and NetGalley for an advance copy for review!
August 10, 2023
I think this book makes some very interesting points, but the way the author handled issues of suicide and sibling incest really didn’t sit right with me. I have also never seen a family in real life have so many intellectual, brainy conversations about their problems, it felt like the author was trying to make them all the smartest person in the room, which didn’t work for me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 26, 2022
reflective and intriguing family story...but way too long eventually
August 29, 2023
This is my favorite novel I've read this year. It is a book about an upper West-Side family who lives in a magnificent building near Zabar's deli. And while I usually am not as interested in character-driven books about family dynamics, this novel achieved what Rebecca Makkai says is her gold standard for reading: that every single page should be "interesting." I seriously could not put the book down. And have thought of it much since reading it.
First, I was fascinated by the mother character. One of the daughters accused her mother of being a person with narcissist personality disorder and yet the mother was not an abusive or unloving mother--not at all. She was just very wrapped up in her career. Both parents loved their children and worked to keep the family together. But the children were so damaged. I actually had to go back and try and figure out how that happened. The mother, who is Jewish and a scientist and has a fascinating and scary theory about climate change, reminds me of my husband, who is also a scientist. His bandwidth for family is more or less limited as he is so wrapped up in his work. He is now reading the novel and feels very connected to both the mother and the father character.
In their youth they studied Zen Buddhism and experimented with eastern spirituality. The mother had an affair with the sensei. And the husband forgave her. They had three kids. The father, who was not jewish, had a deep respect for the religion and maybe it was their interest in religions (Zen for the Jewish mother and Judaism for the non-Jewish father) that held them together for so long. The middle child goes to Israel to work in a peace organization, but is shot and killed by an Israeli sniper when she is doing work in the West Bank. The father loses his appetite for seeking justice after her death, thereby igniting the disintegration of the family.
The story is told from multiple POVs--and there is also a metafictional gesturing to the novel itself. All this is wonderfully done, as is the depiction of the spirit of the place. I even went to see the building when I was in NYC earlier this month and felt like I knew the place so well!! Apartments are not cheap either~~~!
In one of the reviews about the novel I read online, there was a comment that for people who talk so much, the characters really do avoid the most important topics. For me this was fascinating since I do not come from a family of big talkers (the opposite) and in Japan, where I spent much of my adult life, people do not talk in this way. The characters were paralyzed by self-clinging in a way that was so interesting to read. Like hell really is other people--especially people who talk and explain about themselves so much...
There was so much more to this book. Probably my favorite part of the story was about Zeno and his father. They were my favorite characters and I was deeply moved by the story of the slave ship, the uprising and New Earth, from which the novel derives its name... as if this is not enough, there are racial and sexual secretes the family is dealing with as well...
I read the novel twice, basically back-to-back. The first time, I listened on Audible (it was a great performance), while I read the hardcover for my second read. By the second reading, I felt this book to be a masterpiece. I loved it. I am also a fan of the author's story collection.
First, I was fascinated by the mother character. One of the daughters accused her mother of being a person with narcissist personality disorder and yet the mother was not an abusive or unloving mother--not at all. She was just very wrapped up in her career. Both parents loved their children and worked to keep the family together. But the children were so damaged. I actually had to go back and try and figure out how that happened. The mother, who is Jewish and a scientist and has a fascinating and scary theory about climate change, reminds me of my husband, who is also a scientist. His bandwidth for family is more or less limited as he is so wrapped up in his work. He is now reading the novel and feels very connected to both the mother and the father character.
In their youth they studied Zen Buddhism and experimented with eastern spirituality. The mother had an affair with the sensei. And the husband forgave her. They had three kids. The father, who was not jewish, had a deep respect for the religion and maybe it was their interest in religions (Zen for the Jewish mother and Judaism for the non-Jewish father) that held them together for so long. The middle child goes to Israel to work in a peace organization, but is shot and killed by an Israeli sniper when she is doing work in the West Bank. The father loses his appetite for seeking justice after her death, thereby igniting the disintegration of the family.
The story is told from multiple POVs--and there is also a metafictional gesturing to the novel itself. All this is wonderfully done, as is the depiction of the spirit of the place. I even went to see the building when I was in NYC earlier this month and felt like I knew the place so well!! Apartments are not cheap either~~~!
In one of the reviews about the novel I read online, there was a comment that for people who talk so much, the characters really do avoid the most important topics. For me this was fascinating since I do not come from a family of big talkers (the opposite) and in Japan, where I spent much of my adult life, people do not talk in this way. The characters were paralyzed by self-clinging in a way that was so interesting to read. Like hell really is other people--especially people who talk and explain about themselves so much...
There was so much more to this book. Probably my favorite part of the story was about Zeno and his father. They were my favorite characters and I was deeply moved by the story of the slave ship, the uprising and New Earth, from which the novel derives its name... as if this is not enough, there are racial and sexual secretes the family is dealing with as well...
I read the novel twice, basically back-to-back. The first time, I listened on Audible (it was a great performance), while I read the hardcover for my second read. By the second reading, I felt this book to be a masterpiece. I loved it. I am also a fan of the author's story collection.
May 8, 2023
Jess Row’s THE NEW EARTH falls into the category that has for some time now been referred to as metafiction, which means that readers may have to put up with the self-indulgence not only of the fictional characters but also of the author.
You get passages such as this : “Four women at the kitchen table, eating pizza and salad, drinking wine. The novel assembles itself around them. A radial, a radius. Facing outward, faxing inward. A knot. A fist.”
When the author actually drags Jorge Luis Borges into the proceedings, you may be tempted to quit. Don’t. When he returns to his narrative, Row can be deft and engaging in this saga of a preposterously dysfunctional family that includes a father, Sandy, who’s attempting suicide in the opening pages; his estranged wife Naomi, who’s in a lesbian relationship; and their variously damaged children, including a daughter who as a radical peace activist in Palestine’s West Bank has been killed by an Israeli army sniper. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the back story, in which Sandy and Naomi begin their young marriage as members of a commune, where Naomi has an affair with the leader. To cap things off, this affluent Jewish-American family has for years been reeling from Naomi’s revelation that her birth father was African American.
That’s a lot to manage, and Row frequently tests the willing suspension of disbelief; but when he’s on, he can be devastating. Here’s the mother, Naomi, a usually uncompromisingly self-possessed geophysicist and oceanographer, in a moment when she’s caught off guard: “Naomi’s voice squeaks a little, like a toy accordion; she clasps her hands and turns to face Winter (one of her daughters) with an off-kilter, palsied smile, like she’s halfway to a stroke.”
Then she recovers: “She crosses her legs and examines the bottom of one shoe; her voice changes, becomes more throaty, the way only she can curdle the air.”
At one point, Naomi observes: “Once you’ve driven a Prius, you realize that all other cars are ridiculous, that the internal combustion engine is about as relevant as the typewriter and the telegraph.”
You get a sense of what the rest of the family has had to live with when you come to this: “Naomi had a habit of taping up her equations all around the house.”
Younger members of the cast frequently communicate through social media, and Row can be merciless in capturing the appalling collapse of language and thought that this sometimes entails: “didn’t even know I was so angry I actually threw up, no joke. lol”
At just under 600 pages, this is a sometimes taxing but compelling read by an overwhelmingly ambitious writer who has arguably bitten off more than he can chew.
April 21, 2023
Overall probably more 3 stars, but with enough sentences that I highlighted to make it 4 stars.
This has an experimental feel. Non-linear chronology. Shifting pov. The novel itself is both character and audience (it hugs the characters and us, it becomes a sort of Velveteen Rabbit roaming around at a party). The characters often talk in speeches and write long (even by my standards) emails to each other.
So it's essays in fiction format. The author has things to say about religion and migration and climate change and conflicts in Israel. And race in the US, which imho was the least successful topic, in that the last scene explicitly about race, the big culmination (?), was a discussion between a woman who thought of herself as Black and a woman who did not think of herself as Black about . . . Black women's hair.
While I hope to forget that scene, I hope I don't forget an idea that comes up a few times in the novel: a story from the 1700s in which enslaved Africans revolt and take over several ships en route to the Caribbean and sail them to England, where they attack Gravesend or Portsmouth, depending on who tells the story. A myth, a suppressed secret, maybe a chance for the author to tease readers (in your conspiratorial / magical thinking about history, are you an Umberto Eco-ist or a Dan Brown-ist?).
The author pokes more than a few bears in upper-middle class US society. Some of it's gentle teasing (about overuse of the word "trauma," overuse of mayonnaise in Maine), some of it isn't (incest, clergy abuse, suicidal ideation). If you're in the right mood, it's thought-provoking and has some take-your-breath-away writing.
One of my favorite moments describes the contents of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the Upper West Side apartment that the protagonists lived in for decades: newer books at the bottom (Sea of Poppies, Rachel Maddow stuff), with mid-90s and late-80s books about Jewish and Buddhist practices in the middle, and way up top the titles you'd recognize if you grew up in the 1970s among hippie or hippie-adjacent white Americans. Books as the inverted geological sediment of a United States whose end the characters pre-grieve.
This has an experimental feel. Non-linear chronology. Shifting pov. The novel itself is both character and audience (it hugs the characters and us, it becomes a sort of Velveteen Rabbit roaming around at a party). The characters often talk in speeches and write long (even by my standards) emails to each other.
So it's essays in fiction format. The author has things to say about religion and migration and climate change and conflicts in Israel. And race in the US, which imho was the least successful topic, in that the last scene explicitly about race, the big culmination (?), was a discussion between a woman who thought of herself as Black and a woman who did not think of herself as Black about . . . Black women's hair.
While I hope to forget that scene, I hope I don't forget an idea that comes up a few times in the novel: a story from the 1700s in which enslaved Africans revolt and take over several ships en route to the Caribbean and sail them to England, where they attack Gravesend or Portsmouth, depending on who tells the story. A myth, a suppressed secret, maybe a chance for the author to tease readers (in your conspiratorial / magical thinking about history, are you an Umberto Eco-ist or a Dan Brown-ist?).
The author pokes more than a few bears in upper-middle class US society. Some of it's gentle teasing (about overuse of the word "trauma," overuse of mayonnaise in Maine), some of it isn't (incest, clergy abuse, suicidal ideation). If you're in the right mood, it's thought-provoking and has some take-your-breath-away writing.
One of my favorite moments describes the contents of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the Upper West Side apartment that the protagonists lived in for decades: newer books at the bottom (Sea of Poppies, Rachel Maddow stuff), with mid-90s and late-80s books about Jewish and Buddhist practices in the middle, and way up top the titles you'd recognize if you grew up in the 1970s among hippie or hippie-adjacent white Americans. Books as the inverted geological sediment of a United States whose end the characters pre-grieve.
September 21, 2023
I give this book 4 stars for the first 200-300 pages, and 3 stars for the remaining. I found the beginning of the book interesting and compelling, as you're introduced to each character and the pivotal (sometimes shocking) aspects of their lives are unveiled at a smooth cadence that keeps you turning the page. I also found the author's takes on Israel/Palestine, the United States, climate change, college romance and other topics really really fascinating. If that had been more of the book - 5 stars from me. Instead, I agree with other reviews that there are huge swaths of the book that need paring down, especially because towards the end, despite the promising, character-developing-and-revealing beginning, the characters/storyline/plot were clearly not developing any further nor really moving in any solid direction or conclusion. I also found the dialogue between the characters sometimes impossible to follow - the Wilcox family never seems to be actually responding to what the other person is saying but rather trying to get their own pithy soundbite into the mix, which is cute and amusing to a point but then got annoying. I felt compelled to skip over those parts by the end. Beyond the dialogue being confusing, it was difficult to actually understand who the characters were as the story progressed, or learn more about them after their introduction. I didn't feel their real character or nature came into focus through the dialogue, and we never really got to understand what was going through the character's heads at any given time. Also, the interludes about the novel as kind of a third-person omniscient narrator were weird. I didn't feel like it added anything. Anyway, in conclusion, I wouldn't really recommend this book.
April 20, 2023
The New Earth: A Novel, by Jess Row, is a commanding investigation of our deep and impossible desire to undo the injustices we have both inflicted and been forced to endure. When I read books about dysfunctional families, I am reminded of how important family is to our health and how blessed I am not to be a member of a family like the one Jess Row has created. I highly recommend this book!
The Wilcoxes saga is a case study of the difficulties of modern relationships. The reunion at the wedding of their daughter Winter unfolds in a manner that keeps the reader engaged until the final words appear on the page. Lies, infidelity, and how these actions compound and create problems for the younger generation is a book well worth reading.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
For fifteen years, the Wilcoxes have been a family in name only. Though never the picture of happiness, they once seemed like a typical white Jewish clan from the Upper West Side. But in the early 2000s, two events ruptured the relationships between them. First, Naomi revealed to her children that her biological father was Black. In the aftermath, college-age daughter Bering left home to become a radical peace activist in Palestine's West Bank, where an Israeli Army sniper killed her.
In 2018, Winter Wilcox was getting married, and her only demand was that her mother, father, and brother emerge from their self-imposed isolations and gather once more. After decades of neglecting personal and political wounds, each remaining family member must face their fractured history and decide if they can ever reconcile.
Assembling a vast chorus of voices and ideas from across the globe, Jess Row "explodes the saga from within--blows the roof off, so to speak, to let in politics, race, theory, and the narrative self-awareness that the form had seemed hell-bent on ignoring" (Jonathan Lethem).
The Wilcoxes saga is a case study of the difficulties of modern relationships. The reunion at the wedding of their daughter Winter unfolds in a manner that keeps the reader engaged until the final words appear on the page. Lies, infidelity, and how these actions compound and create problems for the younger generation is a book well worth reading.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
For fifteen years, the Wilcoxes have been a family in name only. Though never the picture of happiness, they once seemed like a typical white Jewish clan from the Upper West Side. But in the early 2000s, two events ruptured the relationships between them. First, Naomi revealed to her children that her biological father was Black. In the aftermath, college-age daughter Bering left home to become a radical peace activist in Palestine's West Bank, where an Israeli Army sniper killed her.
In 2018, Winter Wilcox was getting married, and her only demand was that her mother, father, and brother emerge from their self-imposed isolations and gather once more. After decades of neglecting personal and political wounds, each remaining family member must face their fractured history and decide if they can ever reconcile.
Assembling a vast chorus of voices and ideas from across the globe, Jess Row "explodes the saga from within--blows the roof off, so to speak, to let in politics, race, theory, and the narrative self-awareness that the form had seemed hell-bent on ignoring" (Jonathan Lethem).
June 23, 2023
Whew...I am more than a little embarrassed by how long it took me to read this book. I started it while traveling last month and routinely got distracted by various HBO and Netflix binges as well as general fatigue. And, it should go without saying, this novel is really long. That was my main issue with it; not much critical narrative would have been lost by cutting 200 pages. Sometimes, Row also gets a little too attached to philosophical or meta commentary about the role of the novel.
The story itself is engrossing and elaborate. Across nearly 600 pages, Row slowly reveals fragments of a decadeslong family epic that begin to merge and form a shocking—sometimes revolting—mosaic. It's not a pretty tale. Rife with tragedy, infidelity, and other unimaginable transgressions, the Wilson family saga is an uncomfortable study of the role of race in American domestic life as well as in American imperial activity around the world, particularly in Israel-Palestine and Latin America. It is not a conclusive story, with a happy ending and reassurance that all characters are ultimately "good." Instead, an ambiguous close (which includes a chapter called "America Is Dead") seems to serve as an indictment of us all—and a reminder that the fight for justice is ongoing.
The story itself is engrossing and elaborate. Across nearly 600 pages, Row slowly reveals fragments of a decadeslong family epic that begin to merge and form a shocking—sometimes revolting—mosaic. It's not a pretty tale. Rife with tragedy, infidelity, and other unimaginable transgressions, the Wilson family saga is an uncomfortable study of the role of race in American domestic life as well as in American imperial activity around the world, particularly in Israel-Palestine and Latin America. It is not a conclusive story, with a happy ending and reassurance that all characters are ultimately "good." Instead, an ambiguous close (which includes a chapter called "America Is Dead") seems to serve as an indictment of us all—and a reminder that the fight for justice is ongoing.
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