While I loved Sara Baume's SPILL SIMMER FALTER WITHER, I found this one very disappointing. It starts from nowhere and ends up going nowhere. There is a stasis that becomes, finally, just plain annoying. I did finish reading it, but kinda felt like I was wasting my time. No. I WAS wasting my time. Not recommended. ( )

It has taken me a day of reflection to decide how to review this second novel from Irish writer Sara Baume. Her first novel, Spill Simmer Falter Wither, was as wonderful as its title. I read it as an audio book and loved it, so was eager for Baume’s second novel. A Line Made By Walking (and she is terrific with titles) is sensitive, funny, sad, and glorious in its language—Sara Baume is a gifted writer. At the same time, I thought perhaps the novel was a little baggy and I oscillated between strongly identifying with the protagonist Frankie’s emotions and perceptions and finding her irritatingly self-absorbed. Then again, I’m 66 and she is 26; then again not to assert that I’m not also irritatingly self-absorbed. So my 24 hours of reflection led me to conclude that my reservations were really an expression of how deeply the perspicacity of Baume’s characters touched me.

The novel is about a young artist finding herself. She has a kind and “perspicacious” mother and a recently deceased grandmother into whose house Frankie moves for a time. Staying there, Frankie wanders, explores, reminisces. She launches an art project, taking photographs of dead woodland creatures she comes across on her walks and bike rides. This is counterpointed by her mental catalogue of artworks she has seen: “Works about Lightening, I test myself: Walter de Maria, The Lightening Field...”. There are many of these, studded throughout the text of the story, each with a brief description and Frankie’s reaction. They are real and listed at the back of the book, so you can go to the internet and look them up. It is like a gift and surprise within the book—unexpected and delightful. I haven’t looked them all up but plan to. (Apart from The Lightening Field mentioned above which is land art that I love, most are unfamiliar to me.)

This device of referencing artworks, it occurs to me, reminds me of Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo. Both works set their central tale in a context or framework of other voices, which become a chorus enriching the narrative.

Doubtless, A Line Made By Walking would not be everyone’s cup of tea, but most books do not elicit in me the depth of feeling and reflection that this one has. Eagerly awaiting the third novel from Sara Baume. ( )

Baume's second novel is as poignant as her first. An artist in her 20s, Frances, is struggling with the precarity of contemporary life in Ireland, and of her own emotional state.

Through the book, Baume presents a philosophical study on being young today, of the difficulties of balance and what it means to be an outsider (or whether everyone really is). She cleverly and brilliantly uses contemporary artists' works, described in staggered sections throughout the book, to explore this philosophy. The result is brilliantly engaging and simultaneously rewarding; a beautiful exploration by an excellent author. ( )

Beautiful, melancholy, atmospheric. ( )

I read Spill Simmer Falter Wither earlier this year and I was so impressed by it I immediately put a hold on this book in my library. It didn't disappoint.

Frankie is an art school graduate living in Dublin. She works at an art gallery and she is friends with a few others who work there but she is pretty much a loner. Then she has a breakdown of sorts and calls her mother to come take her home. After spending a week in her parents' house she asks if she can move into her grandmother's house which has been vacant and for sale since her grandmother died three years before. Her mother agrees if she will go see the doctor. Frankie does see the doctor who gives her a prescription for antidepressants and makes a referral to the mental health centre. Frankie doesn't fill the prescription and when she sees the psychiatrist at the centre she walks out on her. However, she tells her mother that the doctors said she was okay and there was no need for another appointment. Instead Frankie goes about her life, trying to find joy. She starts riding her grandmother's old bike around the countryside, as much for seeing and smelling the surroundings as for exercise. She starts to find dead animals which she decides will form part of an art project. She doesn't use the actual animals but takes pictures of them as they appear in death. Throughout her days she thinks of artworks that exemplify something she is thinking about. For instance when she wakes up one morning deaf in one ear she remembers a work by a deaf artist Joseph Grigely who displayed the notes he used to communicate with people who didn't understand sign language. There is even a work called "A Line Made by Walking" by Richard Long. Frankie sees art wherever she looks. If there is a theme to this book that would be it. Art is everywhere, not just in museums or galleries.

All spring and summer Frankie hides out in her grandmother's house. Is she getting better? Sometimes it seems like she is but then something will send her into a panic. Usually when this happens she calls her mother but at the end of the book she makes the decision to leave Ireland for London. So maybe what Frankie needs is to cut the apron strings. The reader hopes this will work for her but wonders if she might just get worse far from home without her support system.

I was not surprised to read in the author's bio that she is also an art school graduate. I was certainly curious about a number of the artworks she mentions. I spent this morning looking them up on the internet. After all in the Author's Note Sara Baume says " I urge readers to seek out, perceive and interpret these artworks for themselves." ( )