Elsa is struggling. Her formative relationship with a couple has abruptly ended, leaving her depressed and directionless in her childhood bedroom. She scrolls aimlessly through the internet in search of meaning. Her screen provides a new obsession: a charismatic young actor whose latest feature is a gay love story. And then Elsa sees the actor in the flesh; he and an entourage of actors, writers, and directors have descended upon her hometown for the annual theater festival. When she is hired as a hostess at the one upscale restaurant in town, Elsa finds herself in frequent contact with the actor and his collaborators. But her obsession shifts from the actor to his frequent dinner companion – an alluring, androgynous person called Sam.
Sharp and funny, but never cruel or condescending ... These rare narrative doldrums are made good by Newbound’s considerable wit, deployed through her astute use of the close-third-person point of view ... A quietly commanding debut by a writer of intense precision and restraint.
It does not make for pleasurable reading to be kept inside the egocentric but lobotomized experience of heartbreak, with its keynotes of hollowness and despair. It thus comes as a relief when Newbound introduces Elsa’s rebound ... Madison Newbound refuses her protagonist any obvious routes to happiness. What she offers Elsa, at last, has far greater worth: a reminder that what we ought to find in relationships, any kind of relationship, is something like mutual understanding, like recognition.
This debut is realistic in its portrayal of a listless young woman lacking direction, and some readers will find many moments to relate to. The endless repetition of actions and thought patterns that fill the first two-thirds of the book mirror the monotony of Elsa’s days, but they quickly begin to drag.
