Lucy Ellmann made a splash this year by being nominated for the Booker Prize and making the short list for her novel that tops out at close to 1000 pages and I think contains a single sentence of stream of consciousness in the mind of a housewife in the American midwest. This book, and perhaps her subsequent ones, set up that book in its form.
This book is also close to if not stream of consciousness of two sisters, one narrating, the other being narrated, living out the kind of odd phenomenon of Americans’ twenties in the era of post-divorce America. What I mean by this is when you read novels, especially by women, but plenty by men, from the 1960s and 1970s especially, there’s this kind of presence of marriage as an inevitability that permeates so many novels. By this time, and plenty of times earlier, it becomes clear that there’s a shift in the cultural expectations. That’s not to say that many if not most American women still faced (still face?) that same pressure, but there’s been some kind of releasing of some amount of that pressure.
This book then narrates what used to be a decade of marriage or missed marriage through the consciousness of someone still trying to figure out what that period can be used for. In addition, there’s the added anti-capital statelessness feelings that come with being a perpetual grad student. If you’ve ever been single and a full-time grad student, perhaps you’ve felt this of looking without finding, of not really looking and finding simulacra, or of not looking and still feeling lost in the the more staid parts of adult life you can get with being a grad student.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Sweet-Desserts-Luc-Ellmann/dp/0670827118/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=lucy+ellman&qid=1573652559&sr=8-4)