Diablevert's review

House Lights: A Novel
by Leah Hager Cohen

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/643270.House_Lights_A_Novel?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="House Lights: A Novel" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1176671163m/643270.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/643270.House_Lights_A_Novel?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">House Lights: A Novel</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/180363.Leah_Hager_Cohen">Leah Hager Cohen</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/9554535?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 4 of 5 stars I liked this. The main character's house in this book was set in the very neighborhood I grew up in (though I was of the duplexes she could see from her window, and she of the large single family homes with the blue oval historical society plaques out front) and it was a very weird experience, reading something set upon the very blocks you walked on as a kid...I suppose New Yorkers must experience it all the time, but New York feels like it belongs to all the world. West Cambridge doesn't. But the signs and signifiers of that time and place were so intimately familiar to me I couldn't help but feel a little frisson I delved in. 
 
 Once past that though, the book was pretty good. The plot concerns Beatrice, a child of shrinks and just about to turn twenty, whom her parents have begrudgingly allowed to put off college in order to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. She contacts her estranged grandmother, herself a famous actress, in order to gain a toehold into theater, and the book goes from there. The book reviews described it as a coming of age tale, but I'd say it's equally a family secrets sort of a book, in which the main drama is finding out about whatever terrible past has caused all these people to be so messed up. 
 
 The one trouble I had was with the author's voice---it is clear and self-knowing, analytical. Which makes sense and is fine---Beatrice is intelligent, the child of shrinks, and an actress; one would expect this character to be adept at describing her emotional states. But it doesn't leave much for the reader to do. We get her motives straight from her mouth, and in many places in this books I felt it would have been better, drawn me in more, made me care more, if I had to figure them out from action, to discern them from glance and gesture and dialogue. 
 
 This is a bland review. Sorry. 
 
 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/133624?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Diablevert's review
rating:

bookshelves: recentlyread
recommended for: people who like buildungsroman set in West Cambridge?
status: Read in November, 2007

I liked this. The main character's house in this book was set in the very neighborhood I grew up in (though I was of the duplexes she could see from her window, and she of the large single family homes with the blue oval historical society plaques out front) and it was a very weird experience, reading something set upon the very blocks you walked on as a kid...I suppose New Yorkers must experience it all the time, but New York feels like it belongs to all the world. West Cambridge doesn't. But the signs and signifiers of that time and place were so intimately familiar to me I couldn't help but feel a little frisson I delved in.

Once past that though, the book was pretty good. The plot concerns Beatrice, a child of shrinks and just about to turn twenty, whom her parents have begrudgingly allowed to put off college in order to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. She contacts her estranged grandmother, herself a famous actress, in order to gain a toehold into theater, and the boo...more

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