...a lovely meditation on the mysteries of creativity and its costs, not just to creators, but to those who surround them ... It’s a pleasure to be in the hands of a consummate storyteller, and Glass’s mastery is particularly evident in her skillful use of Morty’s obvious but never overbearing resemblance to the late Maurice Sendak...From this factual scaffolding Glass constructs a fully imagined fictional figure. The traumas that inform Morty’s art are quite different from those Sendak acknowledged to his biographer; more importantly, they resonate with the experiences of other characters as three-dimensional and engaging as he is ... Avoiding clichés about tortured, exploitative genius, Glass crafts a thoughtful, warm-hearted tale about the choices each of us makes, with consequences inevitably both good and bad.
With each of these characters, Glass does just what a generous author should do. She unfolds backstories; she demarcates key traumas; she recapitulates thoughts ... It should all be confusing, but because Glass is a pro, the trains keep running, and we wait to see what happens when her three co-protagonists all converge on Mort’s estate with their private agendas ... In the absence of narrative tension, then, we are left with this thresh of rival perspectives, all generously delivered in the same third-person omniscient. And we are reminded that, like St. Peter, we sit at the pearly gates of our own tastes, deciding (in the absence of clear direction) whom we want to spend our time with ... Meredith worries more than once about being an urban cliche, but even if she is, and even if she belongs in some other, more rigorous novel, hers is a thread I wouldn’t mind following out to its full length.
Modeling Lear loosely after real-life author-illustrator Maurice Sendak,who was gay, Glass uses his biography as a jumping off point to create a charming yet cagey character whose darkest secret itself has a secret ... Writing about writing can be a tough trick to pull off without descending into cliches about troubled geniuses or mystification of the creative process itself or even pandering about the nobility of books and the people who read them. But Glass accomplishes her task with a fresh vision and little fuss ... Eloquent and spell-binding, Glass interrogates these notions of intimacy: who we let see us and how much we let them see.
Glass doesn’t perpetuate the stereotype of tortured, exploitative genius; she gently explores the complex ways an artist transmutes and transcends his personal history in his work as well as the decisions people around him must make about how much they are willing to subordinate their lives to the needs of someone more gifted and driven. It’s typical of the warmhearted Glass that her conclusion finds room for compromise and mutual fulfillment among her full-bodied, compassionately rendered characters. This is a fitting tribute to the man who brought boldness and emotional depth to children’s literature: vivid without being simplistic, as grippingly readable as it is thoughtful.
So intensely televisual is this novel that in reviewing it, I’ve been unable to resist the temptation to cast it ... In contrast to the vast majority of contemporary novels I’ve read lately, I never found it boring. I appreciated the authority with which Glass led me through the highly politicized world of children’s literature, her detailed if overlong summaries of Mort Lear’s books, several of which I wished existed so that I could read them, the moments of insight and empathy that punctuate her narrative. And yet, for all that, I kept being reminded, as I read on and on, of the feeling I was left with after the retina-singeing weekend I spent binge-watching the first season of Downton Abbey — of being emptied out and, at the same time, overstuffed.
Unfortunately, Glass demonstrates more skill in building anticipation than in following through with satisfying revelations. Her use of a fragmented, narrative-hopping timeline overwhelms the characters themselves, leaving them as obscure as Mort’s secrets.
...Julia Glass’s (National Book Award Winner for Three Junes) compelling exploration of celebrity culture, A House Among the Trees ... The truths behind the events in Tucson, like the inner truths of Lear’s life, are slowly revealed as the novel unwinds. Glass is a master at withholding information until just the right moment ... Like the scene in The Great Gatsby in which Fitzgerald describes Gatsby’s shirts, in A House Among the Trees, Glass uses descriptions of Lear’s necktie collection to unveil traits of his personality ...lengthy description is noteworthy because it relates to a central part of Lear’s life with Soren Kelly, his lover who dies of AIDS. Glass provides graphic details about their relationship and Soren’s death ... She brings together all the characters – and sums up their stories tidily.
Her sixth and latest novel, A House Among the Trees, starts with a death and then branches out to other kinds of absence — the loss of innocence, identity and control, among them ... is not a gloomy book, as an observant reader might guess from the shades of meaning that can be teased from the title ... The story unfolds from multiple points of view, revealing an artist who, while cynical about his fans and the industry he served, was also a creative force to reckon with. Glass, an astute observer of relationships and master of dialogue, knits the story together by inventing the effervescent projects that sprung from Lear’s mind...is a comedy, not a tragedy, as the remaining members of the Lear entourage take stock and move forward with their lives. The book echoes Shakespeare, another rather astute observer of souls: All’s well that ends well — or, at least, well enough.
