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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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All Souls
by Christine Schutt |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Ensemble Christine
Schutt packs the 240 pages of her new novel, All Souls,
with an ensemble of characters, each one of which adds to the book in one way
or another. Set in a Manhattan prep school, most of the characters are
students, teachers and parents. At the core of the ensemble is Astra Dell, a
senior who is fighting a rare cancer. Here’s an excerpt, pp. 34-35: Marlene Marlene let her red pen trail
to the center of the lined page to draw circle over circle over circle,
petal, petal, stem. One flower, two, in smears of them, second-period math
class. The old crowding in of the big terms: free will or fate. Underneath
the gobby flowers, she drew an enormous, ornamental, biblical A. Astra Dell's
dying: What did it mean to them all in this overheated room? Check-plus, best
girl, A, Astra, Astra Dell. Marlene Kovack wrote Astra Dell in her notebook;
she wrote over and over the letters to the sick girl's name; she fattened
each into a cartoon. "Marlene?" Miss F
scolded in questions. Death adrift, an odorless gas in the room, Marlene
Kovack felt its woozy effects and was glad when the bell rang and she could
leave off math and numbers. Out
of school, she felt prettier Marlene sat out recess and her next two frees in
her apartment in the bathroom some twelve blocks away, and here she thought
about Astra Dell again and Astra Dell's father and Astra Dell's mother, who
was dead. When Marlene was ten, the only mother with a face had been her own
mother, Theta Kovack, even then droopy, beaked, a slot for a mouth, and thin
hair fluttered to balding an embarrassment. Marlene saw her mother as she
was, and Marlene had seen Mrs. Dell as she was, too. Mrs. Dell had given
school tours. Right up to her violent end, Mrs. Dell was giving tours; she
had stood just behind the visitors in the doorway to Miss Hodd's English
class and smiled at her daughter. Marlene had seen Mrs. Dell's face—eyes,
nose, mouth matched up in small perfection, very pretty. A softer Astra,
orange hair not red. Why couldn't Mrs. Dell have been her mother? Traitorous
thought. One
day Astra Dell's enormous hair clip snapped off (that's how heavy Astra's
hair was), and Marlene had found the hair clip and kept it. The clip was
tortoiseshell and greasy from Marlene's rubbing it. She rubbed it now and
looked under the ledge of the bathroom sink, junked up with soap and dismal. At a time when much contemporary
fiction has become bloated, there are few wasted sentences in All Souls.
When I finished it, I took a breadth and thought, “well done.” Give All Souls
a try. Steve
Hopkins, August 15, 2008 |
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Go to Executive Times Archives |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the Seeptember 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/All Souls.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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