Haven Squire’s Reviews > Scaffolding > Status Update

'you make all your plans and build all your projects but how many of them are yours, and how many of them are fragments of someone else's life'; 'the only way to make a better world is to bring up our sons as feminists.' Stylist reviewed it as being 'intelligent, sexy and brilliantly observed' and that is the perfect description. It really was a work of art and so so cleverly composed.

'I pin some photos to my Pinterest board, and get distracted by something I see on Twitter, and end up reading a story by the New Yorker's television critic, which leads me back to Netflix, and I forget entirely that I even have a kitchen, or a family, or a body'; 'inside his laugh I hear the real question he's asking';' August sweats on into September';

It also kind of felt right that there was no more closure on the characters at the end than at the beginning. There were also some marvellous quotes (so well observed and real):

I really enjoyed that though and unlike with The waves it was easier to follow along with, maybe as there were less characters. It was lovely to see language being used as art rather than simply a means of communication. I also of course liked the undercurrent of a fight for women's rights which was present in both stories.

I do wish there was some closure on Florence walking in on Henry cheating on her though, that was a good cliff hanger and really interesting. It was also clever how there was no signposting as to who's perspective it was in and yet you got to used to the switch between the two it was easy to identify. As both sections went on they felt as though they got more Woolf in style - more stream of consciousness.

It takes skill to be able to put two completely different stories into one book with only the shared prospect of the setting and make them work alongside one another but I think it was pulled off quite well. I wasn't so keen on also getting the man's perspective as well as the woman's though. It made the fact Florence was having an affair feel a bit worse. I guess they both ended up cheating though.

It was also interesting that the Johnathan Clementine was dating happened to be the same one Anna had previously dated. Then of course there was the second and interluding story of Henry and Florence. This took me a bit longer to be interested in because it was such a change from the other characters. I ended up loving their story again though and being interested in how many themes overlapped between the two.

It was interesting to see that side of Anna be awakened as well. Also it was completely crazy that both Clementine and Jonathan cheated on each other with the same person at one stage and yet managed to stay together in the end. I also liked how sex, pleasure, desire and sexuality was talked about very openly and was kind of placed on the same wavelength as everything else.

I also don't know how Lauren Elkin managed to make 2019 feel so vintagy and of the past but I really liked that, even things like scrolling on twitter for hours seemed to be beautiful in the way they were written. Anna's friendship with Clementine was really interesting. I knew they were going to spend some time romantically together because there was always that sort of sexual energy between them.

The setting of french apartments and smoking inside was just so aesthetic and had the right vibe. I also liked that there were no speech marks, everything kind of flowed into each other. I enjoyed how we were just following Anna's life without there really being much happening other than her meeting Clementine, going to therapy and wanting to redo her kitchen, it was more about interiority which I loved.