Miniatures

by Norah Labiner

Norah Labiner's masterful follow-up to her groundbreaking Our Sometime Sister is an engrossing and innovative work conceived in classical style, popping with pop cultural panache, and exhibiting all the gifts and vision of its author, who was lauded by the Utne Reader as one of the "ten novelists who are changing the way we see the world." Miniatures is an intensely evocative novel with haunting characters and beautiful, painterly prose that summon the ghosts of Mary Shelley, Marcel Proust, and the Brontë sisters. Young, impetuous, and possessing a passionate, vulnerable intellect, American Fern Jacobi is traveling in Ireland when she finds work as a live-in housekeeper to famous and reclusive writers Owen and Brigid Lieb. The eccentric and world-weary Owen has lived in the shadow of scandal and suspicion ever since his first wife, a beloved and iconic novelist, committed suicide in the grand, drafty house where Fern has come to work. Amidst the Liebs's riddled and deceitful world, Fern forges an alliance with Brigid, Owen's young and beautiful second wife. When the two share the discovery of a controversial bundle of hidden letters, Fern not only unearths answers to the first wife's suicide, but also to her own past. Norah Labiner 's first novel, Our Sometime Sister , was a finalist for Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Writers Award. She has received an NEA fellowship and her fiction has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Columbia Review , and Passages North . She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Genres: Fiction, Ireland

400 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Acclaimed for her ability to write "heartbreaking and vastly original tale[s] of literary intrigue." (Time Out New York), Norah Labiner's debut novel, Our Sometime Sister, was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award. Her second novel, Miniatures, was an American Library Association Notable Book, a Minnesota Book Award winner, and a selection for both the Minnesota Monthly and Utne Reader book clubs. She lives in Minneapolis."

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Some notes from my emails about this one...At one point, I almost gave in...I wrote the bookclub, "I am ready to give up on this book. I'm on page 110. I am not enjoying the style and have little curiosity to discover what, if anything, actually happens to the characters."

I did end up end up finishing, though. For sentences like this favorite: character Fern: "I sought shadowy figures who fell into the bindings of books, those whose stories were condensed into a footnote" (49). and "No action that one commits is ever an action that one is not capable of committing. I was that person all along. It was only that I needed to become her. And now having become her I realize that she has already shifted and become someone else, and I chase the shadow" (271).

[April · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my cup of tea. I liked the straight narrative bits but got bogged down in hundreds of pages of confusing rambling that I had a difficult time focusing on. I have been trying very hard to really buckle down and get through books I've started but this one was a bear for me. Plus my book seems to have been misprinted and has about 20 duplicate pages which confused the hell out of me. Meh.

[Beverly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, reading this was an experience. I believe this author had dozens of books just waiting to be written and she almost did it with one novel. It's not that I didn't enjoy the book, I was quite surprised by the plot twist, even though I should have probably seen it coming. It was just so packed full of extraneous words...why describe something in one way when 35 ways would say it so much better...that I sometimes forgot what had started the thought. The writing was certainly well done, with lots of societal references that were amazing. I'm just not sure I needed all of that to finish out the tale.

[Elise · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've started this book more than once and never been able to read the whole thing through. The premise was intriguing. There were just too many run-on sentences describing everything and anything but the actual story.

[Patricia · Rating 1 out of 5]

The style is so self-conscious and labored! I stuck with it for all 381 pages hoping it would all come together and be worth it, but no.

[Rachel Swearingen]

Such incredible prose. Although I struggled at times with the overall shape and plot of the book, the prose is just phenomenal.

[Clara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember being distinctly underwhelmed by this novel the first time I read it and felt that Labiner's first novel, Our Sometime Sister, was the better book. However over the intervening almost twenty years, I have found myself returning more and more to this one. While it treads a lot of the same themes that Labiner seems to have continued to revisit throughout her career, the Death of the Author, Shakespeare, the elusive narrator with a vanishing manuscript, spying etc, this is a much tighter, muscular and more sinuous novel. I don't know if I truly enjoy it still, but it sticks with me.

[Mariya · Rating 4 out of 5]

any fan of Sylvia Plath should read this. Also it interleaves the story of Bluebeard with the Plath story and has a surprise ending. If you can get past the arcane alphabetized chapter titles, it's a great read.

[JennanneJ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh disaster! I brought this book along for a flight, thinking it sounded like a pretty solid choice. I spent the first leg of my flight reading about 1/3 of this book, getting more annoyed by the minute at the writing style and asides. I give up!

[Frances · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Labiner's writing style, but the middle half of this book was slow going - I was dying for plot and stuck in allusions. Brilliant, but more interesting at the end. I prefer her "Our Sometime Sister." Coffee House Press.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

very very close to perfect

[RUSA CODES · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the 2003 RUSA Notable Books winners. For the complete list, go to http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rus...