Glass
A Novel
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
A widow, aging and alone, tells her side of the story in this “hilarious, poetic, and heartbreaking” meditation on memory (Hazel & Wren). Tasked with writing the preface to a reissue of her late husband’s long-out-of-print novel, Edna also finds herself taking care of a vacationing neighbor’s pet rat, an aquarium of fish, and an apartment full of potted plants. Sitting at her typewriter day after day, her mind drifts in a Proustian marathon of introspection. What eventually unfolds, as if by accident, is the story of a marriage and a portrait of a mind pushed to its limits. Is Edna’s preface an homage to her late husband or an act of belated revenge? Is she the cultured and sensitive victim of a crass and brutally ambitious husband? Or was Clarence the long-suffering caretaker of a neurotic and delusional wife? The unforgettable characters in Sam Savage’s two bestselling novels Firmin and The Cry of the Sloth garnered worldwide critical acclaim. In Glass, “a dazzling, graceful novel,” Savage once again creates a character simultaneously appealing and exasperating, comical and tragic (Star Tribune). “The book, while a skilled piece of storytelling, reads like a philosophical exploration . . . A fantastic experiment in perspective” (January Magazine, Best of 2011). “An engaging study of both the quirks and the depths of personality.” —Kirkus Reviews “Savage’s decision to use the point of view of an unreliable narrator will capture the attention of readers of literary fiction. The wry, bizarre humor will keep it.” —Booklist “Edna is hilarious, poetic, and heartbreaking, all without really trying to be. . . . The glimpses of her past life are so perfectly sculpted and are teeming with gorgeous language, and her humor that cuts them short is so precise and well-played.” —Hazel & Wren “Sam Savage’s exhilarating, often lilting use of language and his faultless characterization of the eccentric, unraveling of his main character, Edna, is evocative, poetic, and compelling.” —New York Journal of Books “An original and compelling book. Highly recommended” —Library Journal (starred review) “Readers are ultimately rewarded with a nearly voyeuristic pleasure, watching as this human life unfolds, reluctantly, in all its tragic splendor.” —BookPage
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Like a milder Good Morning, Midnight, Savage's new novel (after The Cry of the Sloth) is driven by the dithering narration of a woman adrift in the world. In this case, however, the compulsive recollections and endless qualifications of Edna, a failed writer and the elderly widow of a marginal writer, amount to little of interest. Prompted by a reissue of her husband's one successful work, but writing with no clear purpose, Edna drifts between minute explanations of her current circumstances the position of her furniture; the state of her grapes to often vibrant, outsized memories of her privileged but troubled childhood and her bohemian life with her late husband. Her repeated scorn for him and his forgettable Hemingwayesque "outdoor stories," reveals her most notable trait: snobbishness. (On the other hand, he referred to her efforts as "Edna's remembrance of everything past.") There is little to hold on to but a general sense of solitude and depression. It's only toward the end, as Edna unravels, that any sense of real psychology develops. Early promise of mysterious affairs or incarcerations amounts to nothing, and the lack of structure on several levels (no chapters, for one), though true to character, contributes to the enervating effect.
