Fine Walton, if not quite My Real Children, Among Others, The Just City, or Farthing. Its an inversion on the character in a book who escapes or wants to escape into the real world. Here, a character -- or more accurately, the stem cell of many characters -- wants to bring the author into her fictional world. The author shares enough properties with Walton -- living in Montreal, writing SF and other experiments -- to feel real but differs enough to not feel like an autobiographical sketch. There's tale within the tale, a sequel of sorts to Twelfth Night (whose subtitle is "Or what you will") and The Tempest. But much of the book is an opportunity for Walton to ramble on about her love of Florence, especially the food, art, and architecture. In this, it is a classic novel, a la the Hunchback of Notre Dame, feeling free to discourse on whatever the author likes.

Recommended, but more for Walton fans. Read one or more of the books listed above first. ( )

Advance copy provided by NetGalley.

This has got to be the strangest, most original thing I’ve read so far this year, and I loved it. It’s kind of a mash-up of Twelfth Night and The Tempest, with some art history thrown in, all set in Florence, real and imagined, in different centuries. My unfamiliarity with most of that list did not detract from my enjoyment of the novel, but I did come out of it hoping to read and see The Tempest performed some day. I wouldn’t turn down a future trip to Italy either while we’re at it. The author’s love for Florence practically sings from the page.
There was a lot going on here, many layers to the story. I was constantly being startled into switching gears to follow what was happening, but the writing was so good that it was less being startled than being pleasantly surprised as the author pulled me along the thought processes of the characters—one, a fantasy author, and one, her creation. The narration is done mostly by the latter, who is the essence of many of the author Sylvia’s characters. He is self-aware, and his wish to exist outside of the “bone cave” of Sylvia’s mind drives the narrative, which drifts back and forth between past and present, fantasy and reality.
It was beautifully done, and I can’t wait to start making people read it when it comes out this summer. ( )

The narrator annoyed me mightily to begin with, with his peripatetic way of getting to the damn story already. I stuck with it because I almost always find Jo's books to be well worth any adjustment in expectations necessary (with the possible exception of Tooth and Claw, and it's not really her fault she was writing a pastiche of an author I bounce off anyway). Like Dorothy Heydt's The Interior Life I enjoyed the "fantasy" world more than the "real" world, but perhaps like that book the "real" world would grow on me too upon rereading. It's discomfittingly autobiographical: I don't know how much, but abusively toxic mothers abound in Jo's books like evil manipulative parent figures (in the absence of actual parents) in Dianna Wynne Jones'; Jo likewise fell in love with Florence and, well, is an acclaimed fantasy author.

Anyway. The Shakespearean spin on the fantasy-Florence setting is delightful, and once the two worlds begin to interact more clearly / the "real" world plot starts becoming evident I began to accustom myself to the narrator. Mashups are a thing I like greatly after all.

The repeated evocations of the story of Isaac made me expect (Chekhov's gun -style) some kind of sacrifice to be more key to the story's denouement but I guess it was more of a thematic issue referring to various aspects of the story's history(/ies)? It feels like a loose thread but maybe again a reread would clear it up. ( )

DNF ( )

A strange book, once again very different from any of her previous ones I've read. As always, it was beautifully written, but at first decidedly harder for me to get into than Lent (which I adored). Walton clearly loves Florence and the Renaissance, and has me curious about both of them. ( )