Beautiful writing about finding and losing yourself in other people
4.25 stars
I read this book over the course of a couple of days and watched the movie "Miller's Girl" in that time as well, so it's been an excellent time for being disgusted with men in positions of power over young girls!
This is Tatum's story, told in dual timelines: present time, where she's living in Chile with her partner, Vera, and receives an unexpected phone call from a reporter for the New York Times. Mateo, a famous author who Tatum had a very close relationship with in the past, has been accused of sexual abusing female fans. Despite her insistence that her experiences with him were different, the Times wants to hear about her relationship with Mateo. The other timeline is told as a letter Tatum is writing Mateo and begins when she is in college, far from home, and desperate for an intellectual companion outside of literature. She writes a fan letter to her favorite author, and surprise, surprise, he writes back, and the two strike up a friendship.
The writing in this is beautiful, and I really appreciated the way that Tatum thought about books and reading. Hearing about her struggles with finding her own identity, first through stories and then through other people was poignant and painful. As the book went on I couldn't resist sending my friends updates and intense lines, which to me is one of the marks of a good book. There's so much detail in nuance in the first half of the book as the relationships shift and progress, I wish that we'd gotten more of that towards the end as Tatum has more realizations about her relationship with Mateo. I'd also have loved to see the fallout of things after her interviews with the reporter, and even more on how she ended up in Chile. But overall this was a thought-provoking read, and I definitely recommend.
Thank you to Celadon Books and the author for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review.
I read this book over the course of a couple of days and watched the movie "Miller's Girl" in that time as well, so it's been an excellent time for being disgusted with men in positions of power over young girls!
This is Tatum's story, told in dual timelines: present time, where she's living in Chile with her partner, Vera, and receives an unexpected phone call from a reporter for the New York Times. Mateo, a famous author who Tatum had a very close relationship with in the past, has been accused of sexual abusing female fans. Despite her insistence that her experiences with him were different, the Times wants to hear about her relationship with Mateo. The other timeline is told as a letter Tatum is writing Mateo and begins when she is in college, far from home, and desperate for an intellectual companion outside of literature. She writes a fan letter to her favorite author, and surprise, surprise, he writes back, and the two strike up a friendship.
The writing in this is beautiful, and I really appreciated the way that Tatum thought about books and reading. Hearing about her struggles with finding her own identity, first through stories and then through other people was poignant and painful. As the book went on I couldn't resist sending my friends updates and intense lines, which to me is one of the marks of a good book. There's so much detail in nuance in the first half of the book as the relationships shift and progress, I wish that we'd gotten more of that towards the end as Tatum has more realizations about her relationship with Mateo. I'd also have loved to see the fallout of things after her interviews with the reporter, and even more on how she ended up in Chile. But overall this was a thought-provoking read, and I definitely recommend.
Thank you to Celadon Books and the author for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review.