Whew, what a book- in a good way. I had started and abandoned this book multiple times, never getting past the first chapter. That first chapter featured a character named Sasha, who had problematic kleptomaniac tendencies and I found her so unlikeable that I couldn’t get past chapter one. Reader, I wasn’t wrong BUT things got So.Much.Better.
As I was reading this I kept thinking about how I would describe it, as its not a straightforward narrative, either chronologically or in terms of whose story it was telling. The best comparison I came up with was that it’s a collection of short stories with overlapping characters, a la the Olive Kitteridge novels. We start off with Sasha, who actually does have some redeeming qualities in the first chapter, if you get to the end of it. Sasha lives in NYC and works for Bennie Salazar, a music executive. Each successive chapter slides us to a different time and often a different place, in a constellation of people whose lives overlap with Sasha and Bennie- highschool antics with Bennie’s band friends, backstory into one slice of life of Bennie’s music mogul role model, a celebrity interview gone wrong narrated by Bennie’s brother-in-law, Sasha’s troubled teen years narrated by her uncle, her college years narrated by her closeted best friend. There is no exposition dump with each new chapter- you stumble straight into a new time and location are left to sort out who is who and how they connect to Sasha or Bennie. It is disorienting but its also (eventually, once you sort it out), a little magical- each person’s life pinwheeling into other lives, other times.
The ways that Egan ties these characters together, and the lessons and realizations she paints are ones I never saw coming, and I will be thinking about this book for a long time. Her skill with words also deserves a call out- there was a preciseness and a real beauty in her language use. Although they are dramatically different works, the feeling this book inspired in me was like Station Eleven- bittersweet, tinged with sadness but also somehow hopeful. In a condo where half my reading is just so that I can clear space in my TBR pile, this one is a keeper.