Daisy Alpert Florin

Dear Daisy,

Your name is one dear to me. It was my mother's name, so I was already predisposed to like your book. But I was not prepared for its deeply emotional impact. Your story completely blew me away. My initial reaction was just a "Holy CRAP, but this woman can write!"

So I'm not even going to try to get organized in this "review." And there is so much here to talk about. So pardon me if I drift and ramble a bit. A book that starts off with its narrator being raped is certainly a way to show more get the reader's attention. I'm a guy, so I won't even pretend to know how something like that feels. But I'm also a very old guy, and you could be my daughter. (I researched you a bit and figured out your age, and I am edging up on 79.) "A nonconsensual sexual encounter" is what your cover note calls this shocking beginning, maybe because your narrator, Isabel Rosen, lets us know from the start that she is not a virgin, that she has had some experience, with boys who were gentle, who were friends. And after all it is 1997, she is nearly finished with college when the book opens. In any case, it's a helluva start to her story, and this guy who assaults her, is an awful jerk, who then later accuses her of making him a pariah, when in fact no one liked him to begin with.

And then, just a few pages in, Isabel picks up and reads a few pages of the new Katie Roiphe book, which is not named, but I know of the book, entitled "Last Night in Paradise: Sex and Morals at the Century's End." And Roiphe's earlier book, "The Morning After: Fear, Sex and Feminism," would have been equally relevant here. And, quite incidentally, the book I'd just finished reading before this one was "Fruitful," a book about feminism and motherhood, written by Katie's mother, Anne Roiphe, more than twenty-five years ago. I'm an avid fan of good books, by the way. So I was equally pleased to see one of your minor characters, another student, reading Updike's "Rabbit, Run," - and this at the end of the nineties. Because I 'discovered' Updike myself when I was a college student, and yeah, it was "Rabbit, Run" that I read in 1967. I 'devoured' it, in fact, and stayed an Updike fan from that time on. (I miss that guy.) Of course old Rabbit was something of a sexual predator himself, living for the moment, inside his skin, so he "fits" into your context. And then there's Edith Wharton's novels here, as the subject of Isabel's senior thesis. And they fit well too, especially, I suspect, "The Age of Innocence," which I've never read, but it is about marriage and infidelity, which certainly, again, fits Isabel's story. (The only Wharton book I've read [so far] is "Ethan Frome," which I loved.) And then there's a passing reference to Henry Roth (his "Call It Sleep" is another novel I read in college), and Bernard Malamud, whose second novel, "The Assistant," is especially relevant to Isabel's story, as her dad Abe is a shopkeeper in New York City's Lower East Side, and he had even told Isabel, if she wanted to know more about his life and what it was like, to read "The Assistant." Yeah, old Abe and Malamud's Morris Bober, probably did have much in common. And Morris also had a daughter, Helen. And yes, she was a victim of rape. All these parallels you wove into your narrative, Daisy. So much for a book lover like me to think about, to meditate on.

And then there's Connely, the handsome one-time-poet-now-gone-dry - and married - professor, who is Isabel's mentor, and then her lover. Although 'lover' is too kind a word for this scumbag predator. Yeah, that's how I saw him, because Isabel wasn't his first 'victim.' But Isabel is so infatuated, so deeply attracted to him, that she is an easy mark. And I don't think Connely ever says he loves her. Instead he calls what they have "extraordinary." He is such a bastard. And yet, and yet ... He is also presented as utterly human too, a man who was once lauded as one of the best young poets on the literary scene. Now he writes for the local small-town newspaper, while his wife is a respected historian and educator at the college. And when he gets the occasional teaching gig, he is surrounded by all these dewy-eyed girls. So ... An extremely complex, 'extraordinary' sort of character. Well done, Daisy.

There is much here too about grief and loss, in the person of Isabel's mother, an artist, who died before Isabel went off to college. Isabel has been deeply affected by this loss, and thinks of her mother often. Me too, Daisy, although I was 69 when I lost my mother, who died at 96. Even so, you only get one mother, and I miss her deeply and think of her every day. I get it. And you nailed it, in your portrait of Isabel, and her mixed feelings, a stew of grief, guilt and loss.

There is a passage toward the end of the book, when the affair is over, where Connely reads a passage from the story that Isabel has been writing, a story entitled, "This Youthful Heart." It says -

"We were girls in the bodies of women. We bought condoms with our father's credit cards, drank sloe gin fizzes, and slept with stuffed animals on our beds. We didn't know how to fold a fitted sheet."

Isabel considers these lines, wondering exactly when do girls become women, a point often pondered by any good women writers worth their salt. I think of books I've read in recent years by Hilma Wolitzer and Anne Roiphe. But mostly this passage made me remember when I was courting (pursuing?) my wife, also on a small college campus, more than fifty-five years ago, and how I plied her with sloe gin when we went on solitary "grassers" out in the woods, and the huge black stuffed toy poodle I gifted her with on her twentieth birthday, which she slept with in her dorm room. Really! And I still can't fold a fitted sheet, but she does know how now.

I also thought of another book I've read more than once, Richard Stern's "Other Men's Daughters," a novel about a professor who seduces one of his students - a story more from Connely's point of view, so to speak.

But enough. No, one more thing. I felt it extremely fitting that Isabel's story is told from a vantage point of twenty-some years later. It added an important depth, room to ruminate on her actions.

Okay. I know this is a complete mess as a "review," but I hope you get it, Daisy. I loved this book. I see a very bright future for you as a writer. I am reminded of another young woman writer I know, Kerry Beth Neville. She studied English and Creative Writing at Colgate under the noted novelist Frederick Busch (one of my favorite writers), who called her in one day to discuss one of her stories. And I'm not sure I got this exactly right, but I hope it's close. He told her he had good news and bad news. The good news was that this was a wonderful story, an A-plus. The bad news was "You are a Writer." Because yes, writing is a very hard and demanding profession. It demands discipline and that indefinable something. But it's hard, no question.

But anyway (as my wife so often transitions between subjects), yeah, I absolutely loved this book, Daisy. (My mom woulda loved it too.) Bravo! In fact, Double Bravo! My very, very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, editor of the book, DAISY: PIECES OF A LIFE, by Daisy Whalen Bazzett show less

This debut novel centers on the Spring semester of Izzy's final year at a prestigious private university in New Hampshire. She's an English major about to take a senior seminar in creative writing, when a not entirely consensual sexual experience throws her off-kilter. This is the late nineties, the Lewinsky scandal is dominating the airwaves and this book is a reminder that even the relatively recent past is a foreign country.

As everyone and especially the college administration quickly show more try to move past the idea that anything should be done, Izzy quickly develops what should have been an innocent crush on her creative writing teacher but, again, the rules were a bit different then and Izzy is still trying to collect herself. The star couple of the English department, the department head and her professor husband, are undergoing a public and very acrimonious divorce and, again, how we saw things in the past is not how we see things now.

This is an uncomfortable novel that leans hard into gray areas and how difficult it is to make huge life decisions when barely older than a teenager. Izzy is learning how to take control of her own life, to not be reflectively polite and apologetic in the face of hostility and learning how to make her own decisions in the face of people telling her what she should do, should want, should react. This is an ambitious debut novel that just doesn't mind diving into murky waters. It certainly reminded me of how much has changed in the past 25 years, and how much just hasn't. show less

This book is so well written. There are phrases I read several times, just to muse over, and that makes sense in a novel about Isabel, a college student attempting to become a novelist -- writing itself is under scrutiny here. At one point, Isabel's writing professor says about a story she wrote, "this character feels richly drawn . . . . as for the fragmentary quality -- I would argue that that is part of its strength" (81). Florin could be commenting on her own book here. Isabel is indeed show more richly drawn, but as for the fragmentary quality being a strength, there her professor and I part ways. The novel takes place during one academic year. In that year Isabel experiences nearly every variety of toxic masculinity you can imagine yet they all leave her strangely untouched. The novel opens with a nonconsensual sexual act that seems to traumatize Isabel deeply -- but then she sorta blows it off for the rest of the book. Her feminist roommate is a caricature of every MRA's nightmare and the fall-out of the event is largely attributed to her, rather than to the man who raped Isabel.

As I said, Isabel gets over all of that within a few pages, and it's on to more toxic men, as if Florin had several novels in her mind at once and they all got combined here -- hence the fragmentary quality. I'm not saying that the world isn't full of toxic men. My point is that each experience is so disturbing, so overwhelming, as to deserve a novel of its own, yet Isabel glides through them, with scarcely any thought. She tells us she's disturbed, that she cries, but as a reader, I don't see it, feel it. Florin seems a good enough writer that she could have given Isabel some more introspection, especially since Isabel is telling us this in hindsight, as a successful novelist herself.

The plot pulls you along. It's almost impossible to put this novel down. But, for me, even that is a flaw: too much plot, too little time for Isabel to just think. She's smart & thinks a lot about her childhood. Why is she so devoid of introspection about this year she's decided to tell us about? Her psychotherapist could have a field day with this, but Isabel refuses counseling when it's offered after the assault and, as a reader, I expect her author to do a little more work figuring Isabel out.

So, all in all, promising, but disappointing. show less

This book deals with fairly heavy subjects--if there is any hesitancy to read a book with heavy themes of sexual assault, nonconsent, rape, domestic violence, or suicide, skip this book.

That said, what a powerful story! The idea of innocence is played with from the lens of a young college girl... and the larger-scale backdrop of Clinton - Lewinsky. This two-toned exploration of promiscuity, consent, and reputation is what set this book apart for me. Worth a read for anyone looking for a good show more coming-of-age story, a steamy student-professor timeline, or generally beautiful writing. show less