Kelly Blewett

NonfictionHistory

A history of horrors

Review by Kelly Blewett

Stacy Horn opens Damnation Island with a description of the advent of electricity on the streets of New York in the late 19th century. She contrasts this mystical wonder, which enchanted people and gave them a feeling of eternal progress, with the stagnation experienced just a short boat ride away. Blackwell’s Island, now known as Roosevelt Island, was—simply put—a hellscape.

Purchased by the city in 1828 with the best of intentions, the island soon harbored an almshouse, an insane asylum, a hospital, a prison and a workhouse along its narrow two-mile strip. Proponents imagined a pastoral landscape where charity and punishment were doled out in equal measure, but from its outset, it was a site of barely contained chaos. The Gothic-style structures were instantly overcrowded, and shacks sprang up to accommodate the overflow. Heating and ventilation were nonexistent, disease ran rampant, and the established budgets didn’t even begin to cover the actual cost of feeding and caring for the various populations of each facility. Over the next 100 years, mayhem ensued, with wrongly admitted patients, death by murder and disease, inedible food and unspeakably dirty bathing water.

With chapters that feature the sordid history of each institution on the island, Horn’s book is populated by all the characters you might expect in such a story: idealistic social reformers, clueless judges, abused patients, incompetent doctors and caring but powerless priests. Having reviewed a seemingly endless array of archival materials, Horn brings this subject to light in stunning detail. Readers will instantly see how this history continues to haunt us, as the boundaries between the four classes of people on the island (the poor, the mad, the sick and the criminal) are, in the public imagination, as blurred as ever.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Stacy Horn about Damnation Island.

This article was originally published in the May 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Stacy Horn opens Damnation Island with a description of the advent of electricity on the streets of New York in the late 19th century. She contrasts this mystical wonder, which enchanted people and gave them a feeling of eternal progress, with the stagnation experienced just a short boat ride away. Blackwell’s Island, now known as Roosevelt Island, was—simply put—a hellscape.

Nonfiction

How far we’ve come

Review by Kelly Blewett

Is life getting better or worse? Watching the news these days, it seems that our cities are threatened by violence, our country is more politically divided than ever, and our world is endangered by global warming. The future looks pretty bleak. But Steven Pinker, Harvard professor and bestselling author, offers a different outlook. Picking up where he left off in 2011’s The Better Angels of Our Nature, which argued that violence and discrimination have lessened over time, Enlightenment Now posits that life has improved by several measures over the last 350 years, in large part because of the Enlightenment, a global movement that originated in 18th-century Europe and centered on the idea that any problem could be meaningfully addressed through the systematic application of human effort. Pinker further presses that the insights and approaches of the Enlightenment—including reason, science and humanism—offer keys to humanity’s continued success.

Pinker first establishes the book’s philosophical premise, suggesting that a favorable assessment of humanity’s progress since the 1700s is both obvious and provocative. Thinkers and pundits on both the right and the left, Pinker writes, prefer fatalism and radicalism, and position the present moment in a doomsday narrative that belies the truth of humanity’s global well-being. Pinker measures progress as related to particular topics, such as health, wealth, sustenance, equal rights, safety, quality of life and happiness. He does not limit himself to the Western world, but instead seeks a global point of view, relying on academic works from a dizzying array of disciplines (medicine, history, sociology and psychology) to provide evidence for his claims. Because of this vigorous approach and Pinker’s articulate authorial voice, as well as the elegant graphs that accompany each chapter, this ambitious book is an entirely absorbing read. To settle in with Enlightenment Now is to receive the sense that, on the whole, life is on the upswing and, to quote from the popular musical Hamilton, we should “look around” and acknowledge “how lucky we are to be alive right now!”

 

This article was originally published in the March 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Is life getting better or worse? Watching the news these days, it seems that our cities are threatened by violence, our country is more politically divided than ever, and our world is endangered by global warming. The future looks pretty bleak. But Steven Pinker, Harvard professor and bestselling author, offers a different outlook.

NonfictionMemoir

A memoir of boundaries blurred

Review by Kelly Blewett

Francisco Cantú’s quietly heartbreaking memoir The Line Becomes a River explores the reckless contours of the U.S.-Mexico border, a place Cantú first knew through memory (as the grandson of a migrant), then through higher learning (as he studied international relations in college), then through his profession (as a border patrol agent) and finally, through poetic recounting (as a witness to and chronicler of the border). The Line Becomes a River, comprised of journalistic dispatches and lyrical descriptions of troubling dreams and landscapes, is both intimate and unforgettable.

The memoir opens as Cantú enlists in the border patrol. His mother, part confidant and part prophet, warns him of the dangers of associating with the institution. She doesn’t understand Cantú’s attraction to the role; she is uneasy and fearful. Cantú, both brash and compassionate, argues in favor of the career: As a Spanish speaker, he can be of real service to the migrants; as someone curious about the border, he can finally peer into the everyday confrontations that unfold there.

But the everyday confrontations are horrible and mundane: a dead man’s body left to decompose overnight, dope hauls and the attendant paperwork, starry skyscapes that hang uneasily over enemies hiding from each other in dark mountains. Cantú is forever changed by this work, and while he becomes good at it, he finds he cannot see it through. Even after he leaves, he is haunted. He writes, “I often recognized the subtle mark left by the crossing of the border, an understanding of its physical and abstract dimensions, a lingering impression of its weight.” This memoir—already much acclaimed and the winner of the prestigious Whiting Award—helps readers see the border as Cantú does, a place full of ambiguity and danger, a place hidden in plain sight, a place Americans should try to see.

Francisco Cantú’s quietly heartbreaking memoir The Line Becomes a River explores the reckless contours of the U.S.-Mexico border, a place Cantú first knew through memory (as the grandson of a migrant), then through higher learning (as he studied international relations in college), then through his profession (as a border patrol agent), and finally, through poetic recounting (as a witness to and chronicler of the border). The Line Becomes a River, comprised of journalistic dispatches and lyrical descriptions of troubling dreams and volcanic landscapes, is both intimate and unforgettable.

NonfictionHistory

History of the hoax

Review by Kelly Blewett

Poet and scholar Kevin Young offers a history of the hoax and a chilling indictment of our current moment in this ambitious book. Bunk opens in the 19th century—the days of P.T. Barnum, Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe—as Young pulls back history’s curtain to reveal hoaxes, humbug and circus tents with a sideshow of spiritualism and sensationalism.

But Young is not content to remain in the sepia-toned past. “If all of this sounds familiar,” he writes, “it is because the transformative advent of the penny press most resembles the current change demonstrated, if not caused, by the internet.” Shifting effortlessly from the 19th century to the 21st, Young draws connections between words like swindler, diddling and confidence man and contemporary buzzwords like plagiarism, truthiness and fake news. In both eras, a disenfranchised racial other haunts the discourse.

“The exotic other, the dark double” is a key player in historical and contemporary hoaxes, from the colonialists who donned redface to confuse the British during the Boston Tea Party to Nasdijj, a white man who co-opted a Navajo identity in order to publish a variety of written work in 1999 and the early 2000s. Nasdijj was exposed the very month that James Frey admitted to grossly misrepresenting the facts of his life in his bestselling book A Million Little Pieces. More than simply recounting these incidents and dozens more, Young uses them to facilitate his larger goal: a theory of the hoax itself and the fantasies that it reveals. Like a joke that brings down the house, a hoax unites a cunning speaker with a crowd that wants to be fooled. And today the stakes are higher than ever. Young examines the effects of deception on American politics, literature and everyday life. Long-listed for the National Book Award in nonfiction, Bunk is a powerful, far-reaching read.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Poet and scholar Kevin Young offers a history of the hoax and a chilling indictment of our current moment in this ambitious book. Bunk opens in the 19th century—the days of P.T. Barnum, Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe—as Young pulls back history’s curtain to reveal hoaxes, humbug and circus tents with a sideshow of spiritualism and sensationalism.

NonfictionBiography

The original Renaissance man

Review by Kelly Blewett

BookPage Top Pick in Nonfiction, November 2017

Walter Isaacson, who recently authored the door-stopping, New York Times bestselling biography of Steve Jobs, turns his attention to Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci in his latest book. Careful scouring of Leonardo’s notebooks, located variously in the United States, France, England and Italy, enabled Isaacson to write a work of breathtaking scope and intimacy. Leonardo, the bastard son of a notary, had what Isaacson calls “an instinct for keeping records.” He filled notebooks with observations, sketches, lists and questions about the world.

The many pleasures within Isaacson’s thick tome include gorgeous illustrations, beautiful and precise writing, surprising glimpses into Leonardo’s thinking and, perhaps most satisfyingly, a stunning survey of the artist’s best-known works. Isaacson closely observes the paintings, guiding readers to consider their complexity, implied movement and brilliant interplay of shadow and light. Isaacson also elaborates on Leonardo’s innovative approaches to painting, such as sfumato, the shading of edges through shadow rather than lines.

Leonardo’s life led him to the courts of Milan, Florence, various Italian cities and finally to France. Isaacson explores not only the artistic masterpieces that Leonardo left behind, but also the many remarkable treatises on anatomy, engineering and geography, and the projects that were left unfinished, including a gigantic bronze sculpture of a horse (his rival Michelangelo never let him forget that). Leonardo was a singular man, interested in a range of topics from flying machines and fetal development to the properties of water and the deadliest weapons on the battlefield. Rather than viewing Leonardo’s broad interests as distractions from his artistry, Isaacson helps readers see how the vigorous curiosity that animated these investigations enriched both Leonardo’s life and his art.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Walter Isaacson about Leonardo da Vinci. 

This article was originally published in the November 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Walter Isaacson, who recently authored the door-stopping, New York Times bestselling biography of Steve Jobs, turns his attention to Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci in his latest book.

NonfictionMemoir

The ones you choose

Review by Kelly Blewett

Armistead Maupin is revered for his marvelous newspaper column Tales of the City, which ran in San Francisco papers during the 1970s and ’80s. Like a carnal version of a 19th-century novel, this column followed the fictional exploits of characters that lived on Barbary Lane. Some kept secrets about their gender and sexuality while others were gloriously, radically forthcoming. Nine novels following these characters have been published to date. The success of Tales of the City launched Maupin into the center of the gay rights movement in San Francisco. As he chummed around the city, making friends with movie stars, finding his voice and writing thinly veiled autobiographical vignettes in his column, Maupin became one of the most vocal advocates of gay rights during the 1970s and beyond.

In his new memoir, Maupin, now in his 70s, recalls the tightly closeted Southern childhood that preceded this active public life. He recounts a sheltered childhood (one of his favorite activities was antiquing) followed by years of military service and the dawning realization of his homosexuality. He describes his fractured relationships with his father and brother and his close ties with his grandmother, mother and sister. This story of his biological family gives way to a very different account of his logical family, the vibrant network of gay, male artists in and around the Bay Area who catalyzed Maupin from an insecure youth to a vocal artist and activist.

The pleasure of this book, beyond the funny anecdotes and poignant reflections, is getting a behind-the-scenes look at a treasured series of novels and reading a first-hand account of a significant human rights movements in our nation’s history. Maupin offers a vivid look at key moments—such as the murder of Harvey Milk—and the impact these had on the gay rights movement and his life. Unsurprisingly, Maupin is a sympathetic and soulful storyteller. His account of a past struggle for equality is especially important in our fraught present.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our interview with Armistead Maupin for Logical Family.

In his new memoir, Armistead Maupin, now in his 70s, recalls the tightly closeted Southern childhood that preceded this active public life. He recounts a sheltered childhood (one of his favorite activities was antiquing) followed by years of military service and the dawning realization of his homosexuality.

NonfictionMemoir

A life cut short

Review by Kelly Blewett

Like The Other Wes Moore and Between the World and Me, Danielle Allen’s Cuz presents a rich personal narrative in trenchant historical and political context. Allen tells the story of Michael, her irrepressible cousin with the dazzling smile.

Although Danielle was raised in relative comfort—she describes the casual security of being a professor’s kid in the college environments where she grew up and now makes a living (Allen is a political philosopher at Harvard University) —Michael’s family, the family of Allen’s father’s youngest sister, lived on the edge. When they moved to LA during Michael’s adolescence, Michael committed petty theft. And then, at age 15, he attempted carjacking at gunpoint. He didn’t shoot (in fact, he got shot in the neck), but the judge opted to try him as an adult. Suddenly, this adolescent faced 13 years in prison, a sentence nearly as long as his life had been so far.

The devastating effect of prison on Michael is beautifully wrought in poetic, heartfelt and restrained prose by his cousin, who frequently visited him. When he was released, it was Allen who helped get him established. Despite her best efforts (which far outstripped anything I could imagine undertaking), within a few years he was found shot to death in a car.

Allen’s searing memoir seeks to understand what happened to Michael within the context of LA during the 1990s just after the “three strikes” rule came to pass, as fears of carjacking were running rampant and as gang affiliations pulsed in the street. Having read several books like Cuz in an attempt to understand what is happening in this country, I can say that Allen’s is one of the strongest. This book—part elegy, part history, part political philosophy—is wholly unforgettable.

Like The Other Wes Moore and Between the World and Me, Danielle Allen’s Cuz presents a rich personal narrative in trenchant historical and political context. Allen tells the story of Michael, her irrepressible cousin with the dazzling smile.

NonfictionLiterature

Looking back at children’s books

Review by Kelly Blewett

BookPage Top Pick in Nonfiction, August 2017

In Wild Things, Bruce Handy offers a rousing and nostalgic romp through the classics of children’s literature from the latter half of the 20th century, from Goodnight Moon to Ramona to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Clearly passionate about his topic, Handy dives into the context of the publication of these books with enthusiasm and verve.

Handy makes unlikely comparisons (Beverly Cleary to Henry James; The Runaway Bunny to Portnoy’s Complaint). He vividly portrays Margaret Wise Brown, with her loads of golden hair, unconventional love interests and seemingly endless well of inspiration, and her mercurial editor Ursula Nordstrom, who hovers at the edge of many of the most beloved publications of this era (it was she who convinced Maurice Sendak that Where the Wild Things Are should feature monsters, not horses). Handy tangles with scholars from children’s literature, such as Philip Nel and his interpretation of The Cat in the Hat—Nel argues it’s informed by minstrelsy, while Handy suggests that the cat may be a representation of Dr. Seuss himself.

But this is no scholarly tome. Indeed, Handy makes the personal and idiosyncratic nature of many of his reflections apparent. He frames his chapter on Narnia in light of his own religious inclinations (which are not C.S. Lewis’) and describes how it felt to realize the book had such Christian themes (he was dismayed, but also enduringly drawn to the way the children relate to Aslan, which Handy believes was how Lewis experienced his faith). And Handy’s enthusiasm for Cleary’s character of Ramona is as genuine and sweet as an ice-cream cone on a hot summer’s day. This is a compulsively readable and entertaining collection of essays that will take readers back, in the best sense, to books they may have nearly forgotten but will delight in remembering.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Bruce Handy.

This article was originally published in the August 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In Wild Things, Bruce Handy offers a rousing and nostalgic romp through the classics of children’s literature.

NonfictionMemoir

A beautiful mind

Review by Kelly Blewett

Naoki Higashida is a nonverbal, autistic young man whose first widely translated memoir, The Reason I Jump, written when he was 13, was received with acclaim and incredulity. Acclaim because it detailed the vivid inner life of someone who had, before his mother’s intervention with what they call an “alphabet grid” (a modified QWERTY keyboard), seemed unresponsive, and incredulity because it seemed impossible that someone who was genuinely autistic and working independently could compose such coherent and artful prose. Since writing The Reason I Jump, Higashida has become a celebrity in Japan and the second most widely translated Japanese author behind Haruki Murakami.

Higashida’s new collection—comprised of blog entries, poems, a short story and an interview—brings readers up to speed with the author, now in his early 20s. His thoughts on neurological diversity are riveting: “My brain has this habit of getting lost inside things. Finding the way in is easy, but—like being in a maze—finding your way out is a lot harder. I want to exit the maze right now, but I’m forced to stay inside it. This applies also to time and schedules. They constrain me.” Higashida’s accounts of thinking in images, feeling compelled to make repetitive movements and the difficulties and pleasures of communicating make this book totally captivating. Translator and bestselling author David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas) introduces the volume with an account of the dismay he felt when Higashida’s work was dismissed by critics as fraudulent. Mitchell points out that he has witnessed Higashida’s composing firsthand, and that, moreover, Higashida’s prose has changed the way he perceives—and interacts with—his own autistic son. Mitchell writes that bringing Higashida’s writing to a larger public has been the most important writing task of his life.

Readers will find this older Higashida not only eloquent and thoughtful, but also wise, measured and, most of all, kind.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Naoki Higashida is a nonverbal, autistic young man whose first widely translated memoir, The Reason I Jump, written when he was 13, was received with acclaim and incredulity. Acclaim because it detailed the vivid inner life of someone who had, before his mother’s intervention with what they call an “alphabet grid” (a modified QWERTY keyboard), seemed unresponsive, and incredulity because it seemed impossible that someone who was genuinely autistic and working independently could compose such coherent and artful prose. Since writing The Reason I Jump, Higashida has become a celebrity in Japan and the second most widely translated Japanese author behind Haruki Murakami.

NonfictionMemoir

Journaling to the heart of it all

Review by Kelly Blewett

BookPage Top Pick in Nonfiction, June 2017

In Theft by Finding, David Sedaris, best known for his eight bestselling books as well as his contributions to “This American Life,” The New Yorker and Esquire, offers a glimpse into the most unruly of writing: his diaries from the years 1977-2002. Sedaris notes in the introduction that he does not expect readers to plow through this 528-page tome in linear fashion, but instead to dip in at random. I suspect he would approve of my own manner of reading the book, which was to see what Sedaris was up to on my birthday each year.

However, his (edited) diaries are too interesting to limit oneself only to birthday entries—I wound up reading the whole thing, laughing frequently and earmarking many memorable passages. These diaries reveal the development of Sedaris’ aesthetic, filled with rich and unfailingly sharp observations—portraits of people he saw on the street, overheard snippets of dialogue, accounts of interactions with everyone from cabdrivers to his irrepressible siblings.

For Sedaris fans, the diaries offer a backstage tour of books like Me Talk Pretty One Day (his initial observations of his French teacher, essays he wrote in response to homework prompts) and Holidays on Ice (accounts of locker-room exchanges between men working as Macy’s holiday elves). There are moments of sadness, such as the unexpected death of his mother and the slow decline of his sister Tiffany, who would later commit suicide. But this is not a sad book; instead, it’s a gloriously weird one. Sedaris lists Christmas presents received every year, shares recipes and constantly suggests to the reader to keep going, just for one more page.

“If nothing else, a diary teaches you what you’re interested in,” Sedaris writes. This is a diary that shows us how Sedaris’ powers of observation and his intense investment in his own perspective have enriched his life and, by extension, ours.

 

This article was originally published in the June 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In Theft by Finding, David Sedaris, best known for his eight bestselling books as well as his contributions to “This American Life,” The New Yorker and Esquire, offers a glimpse into the most unruly of writing: his diaries from the years 1977-2002. Sedaris notes in the introduction that he does not expect readers to plow through this 528-page tome in linear fashion, but instead to dip in at random. I suspect he would approve of my own manner of reading the book, which was to see what Sedaris was up to on my birthday each year.

NonfictionMemoir

In the name of the father

Review by Kelly Blewett

Some people are born to write, and one of those people is Patricia Lockwood, who knew at age 6 that she would be a poet. In the final chapter of Priestdaddy, her debut memoir, Lockwood—whose poem “Rape Joke” won her a Pushcart Prize in 2015—marvels at her own forcefulness: “On the page I am strong, because that is where I put my strength.” In this brilliant and heartbreakingly funny book, the poet returns to her childhood home and offers the story of her unconventional Catholic upbringing and her larger-than-life parents.

Lockwood’s father, believe it or not, is a Catholic priest who converted to the faith after he was married. In such circumstances, there is a celibacy loophole, and Lockwood and her four siblings grew up on rectory grounds in St. Louis and Cincinnati, which Lockwood loyally refers to as “the worst cities in the Midwest.” When she became a teenager, she fell in love on the internet and ran away to marry Jason, which, miraculously, turned out to be a great decision. In adulthood, however, the couple fell on hard times and found themselves moving back in with Lockwood’s parents—her guitar-strumming, boxer-shorts-wearing, holy and emotionally aloof father and her paranoid, accommodating and lyrical mother. Surrounded by the vestiges of her childhood, Lockwood begins thinking anew about identity, place, religion, girlhood and poetry—always poetry.

This is a book that will transport the reader deep into Lockwood’s zany and appealing point of view. The sheer authority of the prose will occasionally take the reader’s breath away. To say I could not put the book down does not do it justice, nor would quotations from the dozens of pages that struck me as beautiful and unforgettable and weird. Do yourself a favor and read this memoir.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Some people are born to write, and one of those people is Patricia Lockwood, who knew at age 6 that she would be a poet. In the final chapter of Priestdaddy, her debut memoir, Lockwood—whose poem “Rape Joke” won her a Pushcart Prize in 2015—marvels at her own forcefulness: “On the page I am strong, because that is where I put my strength.” In this brilliant and heartbreakingly funny book, the poet returns to her childhood home and offers the story of her unconventional Catholic upbringing and her larger-than-life parents.

NonfictionMemoirCookbooks

Confessions of a chef

Review by Kelly Blewett

Out of Line details Barbara Lynch’s extremely unlikely journey from a “project rat” (her term) to a three-time James Beard award-winning chef living la belle vie. Along the way she falls in and out of infatuations, describes glorious meals and keeps readers on the edge of their seats.

Lynch’s teenage escapades—boosting a bus, driving without a license from Boston to Florida, flying to the Bahamas using stolen credit cards—are almost as jaw-dropping as her memories of growing up in the South Boston neighborhood under the eye of mobster Whitey Bulger. Lynch’s vivid memories, her straightforward and direct manner of telling stories and her obvious passion for food make these pages fly. The child of a single mother, Lynch remembers how her mom made everyday food special—pickle juice in the tuna salad, crushed saltines in the meatballs, a particular brand of tomato sauce. Here, Lynch acknowledges that care in the preparation of food happens at all levels, that lingering over flavor is part of what it means to be fully human.

The gutsiness that led her to steal that bus later enables her to accept a series of seemingly impossible professional tasks—single-handedly cooking a wedding feast in Italy, making dishes in Hawaii for hundreds, launching a variety of restaurants with the slenderest advance preparation. She admits to saying yes and figuring out the details later, a report that I find fully believable after traveling through several chapters at her side. This is a candid telling of how a devil-may-care attitude gave rise to one of the most powerful female restaurateurs in the country today.

This article was originally published in the April 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Out of Line details Barbara Lynch’s extremely unlikely journey from a “project rat” (her term) to a three-time James Beard award-winning chef living la belle vie. Along the way she falls in and out of infatuations, describes glorious meals and keeps readers on the edge of their seats.

NonfictionMemoirArts & Culture

Making something out of nothing

Review by Kelly Blewett

Writing is hard. Just ask Nell Stevens, a 27-year-old British graduate student working toward her MFA in fiction at Boston University. As part of the program, she receives a three-month fellowship to travel anywhere in the world to practice her craft, and to the surprise of her advisor, she chooses the sparsely populated Falkland Islands. Located in the South Atlantic Ocean near Antarctica, the frigid islands offer Stevens the isolation she needs to concentrate on her Dickensian novel—which, like her life, features a young English academic who travels to the Falklands. Stevens arrives at Bleaker Island, a small world of rock, sea and sky, and promptly puts on an extra pair of socks.

In Bleaker House: Chasing My Novel to the End of the World, Stevens offers a quirky and engaging account of what happens next. Surrounded by a colony of penguins, a beached whale carcass, caracara birds and a herd of sheep, she spends hours writing in a sunroom so thoroughly transparent she feels part of the weather. She plans her day down to the number of almonds she can eat each morning and the number of words she’ll produce each afternoon.

Despite her rigid plan, the act of writing proves as unpredictable and brutal as the weather. Her isolation compels her to ponder the process of composing. How does one make something beautiful from a string of words and longings, from memories and imaginings and, more practically, from computers and books and piles of almonds? Eventually departing the island with a book—though one very different from her original plan—Nell offers a captivating portrait of the creative life.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Writing is hard. Just ask Nell Stevens, a 27-year-old British graduate student working toward her MFA in fiction at Boston University.

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