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A review by kjboldon
The Gin Closet by Leslie Jamison
3.0
This was a tough read. Told from two viewpoints, adrift-in-her-20s Stella, who helps her grandmother to die, then sets out in search of her estranged aunt. And Tillie, the aunt, whose rebelliousness and alcoholism led to the estrangement. There are no happy endings, here, or particularly likeable characters for those who want or need that sort of thing. For me, only Tillie reached three dimensions. Stella was more a cloud of inference I drew from her circumstances, rather than a discernible-to-me character, and since her POV was half the book, I felt this lack deeply.
The many encomiums on the cover and inside note that the writing is beautiful and that Jamison, who has gone on to achieve fame with her essays, is a writer to watch. These are all true. And yet. SO MANY SIMILES. I could feel the writer writing in the background, trying, reaching for beautiful language. And there is plenty of it there! But, and I wrote this about the first novel of another Iowa Writers Workshop grad, when they're this thick on the ground, the really great ones don't stand out. On page 130, anesthesia is compared to a serious conversation after several glasses of wine, then something compared to tree roots, then pain like sutures with seams and a drawstring. The figurative language, to me, after a while, felt exhausting.
In the end, though, the relationship between Tillie and Stella, and the complicated emotions, drew me through to the very end. Here's Tillie, on p 187: "But the times me and Stella fought were good ones, in their way. Like she took me seriously. This was what happened when lives got close and tangled."
If you like complicated, messy characters and complex relationships between women, this has a lot to offer.
Also, the cover, of a headless young woman sitting on the floor in an undergarment, is terrible.
The many encomiums on the cover and inside note that the writing is beautiful and that Jamison, who has gone on to achieve fame with her essays, is a writer to watch. These are all true. And yet. SO MANY SIMILES. I could feel the writer writing in the background, trying, reaching for beautiful language. And there is plenty of it there! But, and I wrote this about the first novel of another Iowa Writers Workshop grad, when they're this thick on the ground, the really great ones don't stand out. On page 130, anesthesia is compared to a serious conversation after several glasses of wine, then something compared to tree roots, then pain like sutures with seams and a drawstring. The figurative language, to me, after a while, felt exhausting.
In the end, though, the relationship between Tillie and Stella, and the complicated emotions, drew me through to the very end. Here's Tillie, on p 187: "But the times me and Stella fought were good ones, in their way. Like she took me seriously. This was what happened when lives got close and tangled."
If you like complicated, messy characters and complex relationships between women, this has a lot to offer.
Also, the cover, of a headless young woman sitting on the floor in an undergarment, is terrible.