Lisa Eckstein > Recent Status Updates

"[When] I don't know what I'm doing and the well has run dry, I'll look through my index cards. I try to see if there's a short assignment on any of them that will get me writing again, give me a small sense of confidence, help me put down one damn word after another, which is, let's face it, what writing finally boils down to."

Looking forward to finding out which of the plotlines are going to meet up and how.

Overall more rambling than useful, but the parts that do strike me as useful strike hard.

Enjoying how flashback chapters are bringing in pieces of the characters' backstories and starting to figure out how different parts fit together.

We're getting the stories of four characters in 1927 Paris whose lives run up against a variety of real artists, with Marcel Proust, Maurice Ravel, and Gertrude Stein already mentioned.

I'm connecting more with some parts than others, but the chapter I just read on Plot was a very helpful reminder about the way plot grows out of character.

I really liked this! While I would happily have read a much longer story about these characters and this world, I was satisfied by the arc of the story that actually exists.

This is one of several famous writing books I own but have somehow never read!

This is great, and I know it's going to feel like much too soon when it's over!

There is so much fascinating worldbuilding in this book, setting up a promising plot, though since it's a novella and I'm already a quarter done, I'm not sure how far to expect the story to go.

"It was easy to get distracted by the internet.... You'd read one thing, then click through to another, and suddenly your afternoon had been consumed by a black hole of hyperlinks. Sometimes I'd hit the BACK button on my browser as many times as I could to retrace my steps. It was like traveling back in time, if time travel made you feel bad about how you'd wasted a perfectly good day."

This is such an interesting story, in some ways tight and streamlined, in other ways a little messy and quirky. Really enjoying it.

"There was no way to explain to a stranger that the closeness we shared was something more meaningful than romantic intimacy. We'd first known each other as anonymous avatars. We'd connected as non-bodies. It almost made the idea of being in love sound frivolous."

Off to a great start, with wonderful characters and several complex situations.

"When Samuel was a child reading a Choose Your Own Adventure novel, he'd keep a bookmark at the site of a very hard decision, so that if the story turned out poorly, he could go back and try again. More than anything he wants life to behave this way."

Really enjoying how the pieces are all adding up.

"She'd decided that about eighty percent of what you believe about yourself when you're twenty turns out to be wrong. The problem is you don't know what your small true part is until much later."

Enjoying finding out the backstories that brought the main characters to their present lives. While the book is quite long, it never drags.

Enjoying the chapters from the perspectives of side characters, and the growing mystery!

"Mostly what Samuel felt during the kiss was relief that the kiss was happening. And also that Bethany's lips felt dry and chapped. This odd detail. That Bethany had chapped lips. It surprised him. In his imagination of her, Bethany seemed elevated beyond stupid earthly concerns." Enjoying the unusual collection of plots, the well-observed writing, and the frequent humor.

Odd and funny and very enjoyable!

"I sleepwalked through that Sunday, watching our group chat like a very pathetic hawk, hoping that Jess and Avani would want to hang out, yet not daring to ask them, and all the time seeing if, in the spacing and frequency of their texts, they might be getting together without me."

"I don't want to be myself anymore," I said. "I want to be different. And this coming-out thing is a way to do it."
"See, most people would say: 'I want to be my real self.'"
"But that's not how I feel--that's how other people feel, but not me. To me, it's like--it's like--it's like I am the thing people see...."

This is a much more hyper-focused story than I usually read, concentrating on one teen figuring out his friendships and romantic life, with no real subplots. The writing and characterization is all very strong.

Enjoying the narrator's voice and eager to see where this story is going!

Enjoying watching the step-by-step of the shit hitting the fan. Also the interesting bit of overlap with Station Eleven!

It makes sense that a lot of this book is devoted to analyzing examples from specific stories, but I wish there was more broad discussion, because the introduction has so far been the most exciting part for me.

Some readers of Mandel's last novel, Station Eleven, were bothered by the number of coincidental connections between characters, so it's interesting to notice this novel is leaning hard into them. It's a much harder story to describe than the last, but I'd say the main focus is the random turns of chance and coincidence that bring people together and shape their lives.

”What I'm suggesting," Caroline said softly, "is that the lens can function as a shield between you and the world, when the world's just a little too much to bear. If you can't stand to look at the world directly, maybe it's possible to look at it through the viewfinder."

There are already many intriguing elements: the structure, the jumps in time, the characters, the ghost...