Myla Goldberg

Lillian Preston was a photographer who achieved more notoriety than fame in her life. She was a street photographer, taking pictures of people in unguarded moments. This novel is set up as the text from the exhibition book for a retrospective of her work at MoMA. So there's a forward by the singer from a punk band from the seventies that took inspiration and a name from the photograph that caused Lillian's notoriety and the catalog text is largely by her daughter, who was the subject of some show more of her photographs, as well as people who knew her, letters and extracts from her journal. The result is a vivid character study of an extraordinary woman, one whose photographs are described but never shown, yet I feel as though I would recognize one of her photographs instantly.

This was a five star read for me, there was not a single page of this novel that I didn't love. The subject matter, that of a woman who chose to live without compromise as a photographer, who chose to raise her child alone in the fifties and sixties when neither of those paths was acceptable for woman, and that of living for one's art, is catnip to me, but the writing was also brilliant. Goldberg spent ten years writing this book and instead of being overwritten, it feels fresh and spontaneous. The format is so well executed that it enhanced the intimacy of the story Goldberg was telling. show less

This book tells of a little girl who gains the attention from her parents that she has always craved when it is discovered that she has a gift for spelling. Her family, which was already dysfunctional, spirals more and more out of control: her brother, who had been a devout rabbi-to-be, converts to Harre Krishna; her mother is sent to a mental institution; and her father pushes her deeper and deeper into an obscure branch of Jewish mysticism, living vicariously through her efforts. I show more honestly wouldn't recommend this book. While the characters are engaging and multi-faceted, the tension in the family is grating, and the book is deeply disturbing. Moreover, I think that the narrative itself could have used more editing. It seems like the author took two unrelated concepts -- spelling and mysticism -- and shoehorned them together into the same book. It turns out that the author had studied this particular mystic in college, which would explain her own fascination with him and his concepts, but I feel that it hurts her story overall. Just my two cents. show less

To say that this book left me puzzled is an understatement. I really enjoyed Goldberg's careful construct: a seemingly normal family slowly coming apart due to miscommunication, mental illness, religious fanaticism and plain old teenage growing up. I also really enjoyed the discussion around religion: a child's acceptance, a teen's questioning, an adult's embracing. I also liked the fact that there are no easy answers: mom doesn't come home, Aaron doesn't agree and dad doesn't have all the show more answers.
This is definitely what makes the end so powerful, but my real question is: has Elly really achieved enlightenment or is she schizophrenic like her mother (or epileptic)? I guess that's for each reader to determine according to each one's beliefs...
This is not what I expected, but a book that I will cherish in all its weirdness and questions, loving but broken relationships and intriguing look at meditation in all its forms. show less

In her latest novel, Goldberg tries something new: writing the entire book in the form of a photography exhibition catalog--yet we never see a single photograph. The gallery number, title, and date of each photo appear, followed by commentary by the artist's daughter, friends and ex-lovers, and letters and journal entries written by the artist herself. The works range from the 1950s, when Lillian Preston rejects her parents' plan for her college education and moves to New York to pursue her show more passion in photography, to her death from leukemia in 1977. A quiet woman, Lillian nevertheless manages to choose her own path. When she finds herself pregnant at 19, she declines an abortion at the last minute and rejects her parents' offer to "help" (by sending her off to a distant relative to have the child and give it up for adoption). She struggles to keep herself and her daughter Samantha afloat financially, even rejecting another offer of marriage, but she never stops taking photos. A breaking point almost comes when a small gallery show results in arrest and obscenity charges over "the Samantha series" that depicts Lillian's daughter in semi-undress. These include what becomes an infamous photo, "Mommy Is Sick," in which Samantha offers a glass of milk to her bedridden, bloodstained mother whop has just had an abortion. (No spoilers here--the photo and the incident are described in the novel's first pages.) The incident caused changes in the mother-daughter relationship that are the focus of most of the novel. In that sense, it is a coming of age novel, but it also tackles questions about parenting, art, friendship, and morality. Mann draws on cultural keystones throughout: the Beats, Sputnik, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War protests, punk rock, Saturday Night Live. The structure provides a means of presenting multiple points of view without the usual practice of ascribing alternating chapters to different narrators. As a result, the conflicts between and feelings of each character are more immediate.

It has been almost a decade since Goldberg's last book, but Feast Your Eyes is well worth the wait. show less