Julia Fine

The Upstairs House presents the best post-partum period descriptions I have ever come across. I found myself having PTSD (not using that lightly) while reading. The narrator's experiences were very relatable and easily remembered by me-- which made her dive into surrealism so disturbing.
The narrator is haunted by Margaret Wise Brown and her lover, Michael Strange. As someone who also studied children's literature at the graduate level, I found this to be very jarring. MWB is not someone who show more is mentioned frequently outside of academics. To have her pop up, much less with Strange, felt nightmarishly tailored to me. There is also a very strong "Yellow Wallpaper" aspect to the plot. show less

Ohh, this one was dark and seductive and I loved it! Venice 1717, two teenage girls, Maddalena and Luisa, are students at the Ospedale della Pieta studying music. Luisa comes from nothing but wants desperately to be a virtuoso violinist. Maddalena comes from a once prestigious family that has been sullied by her mother's actions and so she has been sent to the school in an attempt to up her chances of a good marriage and put them back in the good graces of society. The book is a love letter show more to Venice in the 18th century, full of gondolas, music, masked balls, scandals and rivalries. Vivaldi even shows up as a teacher at the school. These two girls at the center are enmeshed in the expectations and limitations of their genders and they each seek out help in the form of magical wishes at mysterious water edged shrines. Things take a turn and each one is granted wishes, but the consequences are dire. Overall, it's a tense, messy story of two girls vying for success and the outcome is destroyed by obsession, betrayal and revenge. It brought to mind Dangerous Liaisons. show less

In the days following the birth of Megan's first child, strange things begin to happen. The reader wonders, is she being haunted or is she psychotic? Fine's depiction of the isolation of new motherhood and of the expectation for everything to be a-ok right away feels capital-T True, but the unfolding of the story is tedious at times (as is motherhood, admittedly). This novel addresses the ways we fail women and the things that we pass down to our children as we live our lives of quiet show more desperation. show less

I'm almost at a loss for words, regarding this book. Still, I'll give it a go.

I'm a little stingy with my five-star reviews, but half-way through this novel I had to acknowledge that this was in line with other great, modern novels I've read. My tradition is to find signed, first edition, first printings of books that I find extraordinary; I've already started shopping for this one.

No doubt this is a book that will benefit from additional readings. I feel like, even though the prose was not show more particularly dense (really, not dense at all), there were so many things I simply wasn't able to pick up on in a first read. I think that's also by design, but then I'm trying not to put too much stock into what the author intended due to my natural tendency toward transactional reading and also because I think that's (ironically) one of the points of this story.

Rather than bog down with details, I'll say this: this is a story of a girl with a "gift," who touches living things and they die. Likewise, when she touches things that were alive in some way (and this is a very wide-ranging condition, believe me), they return to life. But as interesting as the premise was, and ultimately the reason I decided to read it, it was almost beside the point. This was a story of faith, of discovering truths that most would see as fairy stories or folklore. It's about the legacy of family, the nature of fatherhood, and our connection to our "sense of place." At least, for me, it was about these things. It is a beautiful, wonderful narrative. I challenge anyone to say otherwise.

I found myself thinking of The Testament of Gideon Mack frequently when reading. First, the structure of the narrative wasn't exactly linear, nor would it have worked otherwise. As a result, the reader has to keep a number of things straight in her head. Elements of the narrative that call back to earlier bits are frequent, but never made obvious, and the parallels between the two are never perfect which, like Gideon Mack, disorientates in the best possible way. What Should Be Wild isn't quite as open-ended as Gideon Mack in its central mystery, and as a result doesn't quite reach the same heights, but it comes close. I find myself reluctant to start another book, for fear of muddling my thinking about this one, as I did with Gideon.

The novel has its core elements that are as ancient as they are modern, random in spite of (or because of) the presence of ritual. There are mercifully few references to religion, though religion seems to play an important part in the narrative. Whatever gods are present here are more ancient, more forgotten, than any modern iterations. That contributes to the mystery, and while some knots are untangled, others remain tightly bound -- how could they not be so? So much of what we rely on to provide permanence is dependent on the written word, and the gods of this story (if there are any) predate written language. The relationship between stories, writing, and truth aren't as clear-cut, as the title reveals when it appears midway through the pages. Uncertainty is, ultimately, a feature in this novel, and it's quite frankly delicious.

Highly, highly recommended. If you know me IRL, be forewarned: This is the book I'll be pestering you to read for a while. show less