Stephanie LaCava

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A punky, raw novel of millenial disaffection, trauma and 1960s cinema

Margot is the child of renowned musicians and the product of a particularly punky upbringing. Burnt-out from the burden of expectation and the bad end of the worst relationship yet, she leaves New York and heads to to the Pacific Northwest. She's seeking to escape both the eyes of the world and the echoing voice of that last bad man. But a chance encounter with a dubious doctor in a graveyard, and the discovery of a dozen old film reels, opens the door to a study of both the peculiarities of her body and the absurdities of her famous family.

A genre-bending, atmospheric and emotionally honest account of a young woman's investigation into her past and the complex reactions of her body.

At once an analysis of the abandoned 1968 Cannes Film Festival and a literary take on cinema du corp, Stephanie LaCava's new novel is an audaciously sexy and moving exploration of culture and connections, bodies and breakdowns.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: ...and now for something marginally different...

Screwed-up child of famous parents is failing at Life because Trauma and she's got these awful habits that substitute for character and her whole head...this is a récit, not really a novel because the whole point is that we don't leave the lady's head and are reminded of it...is stuffed with shards of images and sounds and they all sort of coalesce into an image of...

...I have no way to finish that sentence. I didn't get an image from Margot's chaotic maunderings.

Yet again there are men at the center of her trauma. Men: Don't have relationships with women. It doesn't go anywhere good. You'll end up blamed for something and quite possibly sued.

That's my main take-away from this mishegas. There's no way for me to pluck a piece of the text out for your perusal because they all rely on each other, in a cumulative-effect way, for their power. I will say that, as little as I enjoyed the story I was quite interested in the way the author assembled the shards into an effective mosaic. Brightness, shadows, saturated colors; a vague grey smog of dissociation surrounding it, getting between the bright moments, eclipsing some of them. It's an interesting effect.

But the problem is it's telling me an oft-told tale of poor-little-rich-girl and I'm just not interested. Handed a life of family connections and a modicum of talent? Use 'em or reject 'em, but wallowing along in the gutter next to the highway and under the sidewalk is a choice for people like Margot. So I don't see the point of empathizing with her. "Make a different choice" is the callous, dismissive response Margot elicits from me.

Yet I read the whole book....… (mehr)

A good title and a quirky technique of extended explanatory footnotes is not enough to raise this self-indulgent memoir above the level of a whiny teen blog. It is not unusual or surprising to learn that a teenage girl thought of herself as weird or strange or unique. That doesn't make her weird or strange or unique. It just makes her an ordinary teenager. That she lives a life of unacknowledged privilege, flitting between homes in New York, Paris, and Cape Cod makes her self-regard near insufferable. Perhaps it is therefore unsurprising that the author has found herself in the world of high fashion, profile blogging, and illness narrative. It's all about the packaging, as evidenced by the fact that I picked this book up in a bookstore and bought it on the strength of its look and feel without knowing anything about it.

It isn't that LaCava is a bad writer. Just the opposite. That's the real disappointment here. I think she might be well worth reading if she channelled her teen angst and vaunted reading of books (does that really make someone special these days?) into crafting fiction. And the ability to speak another language might mark you out as brilliant if you are an insular white New Yorker, but I'm not sure it distinguishes you even from the taxi drivers you are so delighted at confounding in Paris, all of whom typically speak more than two languages. I look forward to what this writer produces once she gets over herself. But for now, not recommended.… (mehr)

This book is a differently and originally written type of memoir. Moving to Paris as a child, Stephanie feels a strong disconnect to her own life and emotions. Objects, which had always been important to her, become even more so as she uses them to feel a connection to life. She collects archaic facts and figures about people and objects and these also help to fill in the void. Quite a different and inventive way to deal with her loneliness and subsequent depression. I love trivia, and O found the footnotes and pictures in this book wonderful. So many little factoids; that one out of every three bugs is a beetle, the meaning and poisonous qualities of lilies of the valley, the importance and history of rings and bangles and so much more. Also a unique way of showing the reader how her mind was working in its attempt to survive. I gave this book 4 stars because it isn't your usual type of whoa is me, abusive childhood type of memoir and for the unique way in which it is presented.… (mehr)