Idra Novey

“I thought I could be both. Mostly grandmother, and on occasion a bit wolf.” —
Idra Novey, “ Take What You Need”

Little Red Riding Hood is not the only fairy-tale allusion in Idra Novey's striking 2023 novel. The story may also remind readers of Cinderella or any fairy tale with a wicked stepmother. Is Jean, Leah's stepmother, wicked or not? Is she the grandmother or the wolf?

Leah loved her stepmother when she was a little girl, but Jean's marriage to her father didn't last, and the show more two were separated for many years. A reunion a few years before left Leah questioning her previous affection for Jean, and they parted under unpleasant circumstances. Now with a family of her own, Leah learns Jean has died and she is invited by a man named Elliott to come to Jean's house to, in effect, "take what you need."

In alternate chapters we read Leah's story in the present and Jean's story filling in the time between her marriage to Leah's father and her own death from falling off a sculpture in her own home.

Jean is a frustrated artist who uses her retirement years to create sculptures in her living room. She calls them Manglements. Her art is made from scrap metal, discarded mirrors and other junk found in her Appalachian town —"take what you need," in other words. Eventually it becomes so enormous, yet so impressive, that after her death nobody knows what to do with it.

Elliott is a young man with no apparent future, but with an unsuspected appreciation for art. He provides the muscle for her work and eventually moves in with her. In between he often breaks into her house at night (while she listens from her bed) and steals things — once again, "take what you need."

The novel's three major characters have complex relationships with one another, each of them mostly grandmother, and on occasion a bit wolf. show less

Told in alternating voices of Jean, the stepmother, and Leah, the stepdaughter, who have been estranged for many years. Though devoted to Leah, Jean divorced Leah's father when she was ten because of the father's emotionally abusive behavior toward Jean. Always an outsider in the rural Appalachian community both because she was Jewish and longed to be an artist, Jean is both unwilling and unable to leave the community. She inherits her father's home in a distressed neighborhood and begins to show more weld sculptures in the living room using scrap metal from a family junk yard.

Leah has grown up, become multilingual, married a man from Chile, and has a young son. She is contacted by Elliot, a man living with Jean, to tell her that Jean has died and left all of her art to Leah. While Jean's chapters precede her death, Leah's chapters take place in the aftermath of Jean's death, chronicling her return, with her blended family, to the depressed Appalachian community rife with excessive nationalism and bigotry.

In a relatively short book, the author explores the inner drive to create. And the contrast between lives that have access to education and opportunity and those who do not. It's a thought provoking novel and I look forward to more of this author's writing. show less

It reads rather urgently & quickly. Ultimately, it's about abuse of power, whether that power is at an individual level in domestic violence situations, or whether it is at a national or international scale of politicians controlling things, stronger nations propping up regimes in smaller countries, etc. It also explores living through these things, how it shapes you, mutes you, or (sometimes) empowers you to speak up or act out. To a small extent, it reads like an allegory with a tiny touch show more of magical realism (especially in the beginning), though it seems to get more grounded as it moves through the story. Timely & recommended but with a trigger warning for domestic violence. show less

From my blog: I loved Idra Novey’s Ways to Disappear. She had me with her first sentence: “In a crumbling park in the crumbling back end of Copacabana, a woman stopped under an almond tree with a suitcase and a cigar.” Whether it was the repetition of “crumbling,” the combination of the suitcase and the cigar, or the thought of almonds, which I enjoy eating on just about anything, yes, dear reader, I bought the book. In hardcover. I had to find out what happens when American show more translator Emma Neufeld goes from snowy Pittsburg to blazing-hot Brazil in search of the almond tree woman, Beatriz Yagoda, who happens to be Emma’s author. Beatriz has gone missing because of gambling debts and Emma goes missing on her lets-go-running-and-lets-get-married boyfriend because, well, our authors are part of us in some mysterious way. Has Novey ever used the hairbrush of one of her authors? I don’t know and I don’t need to know but I will say that I, personally, have never used a hairbrush (or comb or other grooming device) belonging to any of my authors but oh my, what a wonderful, fitting metaphor. On the same page (23, if anyone’s looking), there’s a mention of Emma’s (earlier, of course) confession to Beatriz that she “hadn’t been quite as dutiful in her last translation as in Beatriz’s earlier books, and Beatriz had replied that duty was for clergy. For translation to be an art, she told Emma, you have to make the uncomfortable but necessary transgressions that an artist makes.” Yes, yes, and yes. I couldn’t wait to buy the book because Novey mentions “the risk-taking, the reckless joys of translation” in an LA Times interview that my cousin clipped and sent to me… Risks and joys are what make translation so exhilarating and I feel lots of reckless joy and risk-taking in Ways to Disappear, too, and all of it works and pays off for Novey. show less