Ben Marcus's books The Age of Wire and String and Notable American Women were considered "experimental" fiction because of his unconventional use of...
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Meet the Hennarts: Samantha Hennart, a poet with writer's block; her husband, Bernard, obsessed with the life of a nineteenth-century Belgian mystic with stigmata; their son, Ryan, a mediocre rock musician; and their eighteen-year-old daughter, Marguerite, who is quietly losing her mind. A meditation on family, faith, and mental illness, Genealogy is an operatic story of one family's unraveling and ultimate redemption.
Review:
"Samantha Hennart is about to die alone from a brain aneurysm; Casey (The Shape of Things to Come) tells her story in flashback. Bernard, Sam's English professor husband, splits the scene in upstate New York (where they live as former urbanites) upon discovering his wife flagrante delicto with the carpenter; Sam had hired him to redo the bathroom so that she might treat her manic depressive daughter, Marguerite, with hydrotherapy. Instead, teen Marguerite runs away, landing in a locked ward in Queens, and son Ryan, a marijuana addict, has already escaped to California, where he haunts morgues. Casey seems to be arguing that the family fell apart because of Sam's essential lack of interest in her children. A better bet of what ails this foursome is utter implausibility: nothing is convincing about these characters, particularly the dialogue, which is heavy on irony and light on authenticity. 'Where is your italicist?' Sam asks of her husband. 'You know, the little man who jumps up and down behind you whenever you make a really important point?' He's nowhere to be found here." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"Maud Casey's 'Genealogy' opens with the unusual image of an aneurysm described as 'an exclamation point curled into a comma waiting for the end of the sentence.' The same analogy of unfulfilled expectations could describe the victim of the aneurysm: Samantha Hennart, a poet who hasn't written a poem in nearly two decades. Her husband, Bernard, is a failing English professor fixated on a 19th-century... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) Belgian visionary. Their daughter, Marguerite, hears her blood whispering, and their son, Ryan, spends his days listlessly smoking pot. All the Hennarts are caught, yearning for the extraordinary, waiting for the bang. 'Genealogy' explores the anomie and bewilderment of these disillusioned lives. It's a familiar subject for Casey, also the author of 'The Shape of Things to Come,' but this new novel lacks her usually wry, comic tone. The Hennarts are incapable of speaking and thinking in voices that aren't collages of their various preoccupations, all of which seem increasingly like an inside joke that's no longer funny. 'Where is your italicist?' Samantha says, over and over. 'Who is the most?' Bernard insists on asking. It's no wonder Marguerite finds herself in a mental institution at age 18, unable to distinguish between literal and figurative idioms. The other Hennarts may be sane, but they are all depressed — probably clinically. An unhappy, paralyzed family is an old subject, but the style here is experimental. Casey has set out not only to portray alienated characters but also to enact their bewilderment in the very structure of her novel. It progresses in fits and starts, shifting abruptly between the present day, flashbacks and a tangled web of past events written sometimes in the present tense, sometimes in the past. Her writing can be superb: The scene where Bernard finds himself wearing a waitress' bloomers perfectly captures his sense of hopelessness and absurdity. At other times, though, the novel is overwrought. It is, in some sense, crafted like a family tree: a web of associations and repetitions and echoes. But the connections are superficial. Nothing happens, nothing is said, that isn't later (or, confusingly, sometimes earlier) a point of reference. Each connection is an artifice, not the real thing. None of the Hennarts could plausibly exist outside the confines of the novel. This seems at least partly intentional; after all, to the members of this family, events that promise cosmic meaning — a brush with death, a kiss, a beautiful view — feel hollow. Marguerite hears a pun and looks for order: Shouldn't the fact that word 'soul' sounds like the sole of a shoe mean something? The Hennarts' problem is also the book's. A soul is not a sole, and language and structure are not a voice and a story. Casey writes with compassion and wisdom when she writes about people of flesh and blood, but here, she often seems more concerned with commas and exclamation points. Louisa Thomas is on the editorial staff of the New Yorker." Reviewed by Louisa Thomas, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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Maud Casey stories have appeared in The Threepenny Review, Prairie Schooner, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere. Casey received her B.A. from Wesleyan University and her M.F.A. in fiction from the University of Arizona. She lives in Washington, DC and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Maryland.
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"Samantha Hennart is about to die alone from a brain aneurysm; Casey (The Shape of Things to Come) tells her story in flashback. Bernard, Sam's English professor husband, splits the scene in upstate New York (where they live as former urbanites) upon discovering his wife flagrante delicto with the carpenter; Sam had hired him to redo the bathroom so that she might treat her manic depressive daughter, Marguerite, with hydrotherapy. Instead, teen Marguerite runs away, landing in a locked ward in Queens, and son Ryan, a marijuana addict, has already escaped to California, where he haunts morgues. Casey seems to be arguing that the family fell apart because of Sam's essential lack of interest in her children. A better bet of what ails this foursome is utter implausibility: nothing is convincing about these characters, particularly the dialogue, which is heavy on irony and light on authenticity. 'Where is your italicist?' Sam asks of her husband. 'You know, the little man who jumps up and down behind you whenever you make a really important point?' He's nowhere to be found here." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
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