Book Review of Negative Space by Gillian Linden

Name of Book: Negative Space

Author: Gillian Linden

ISBN: 978-1-324-06554-8

Publisher: W.W. Norton

Type of book: daily life, post Covid period, school, teacher, decisions, Sims in a novel, New York, mundane, untold secrets 

Year it was published: 2024 

Summary:

A gem of a debut novel about a young mother navigating the instabilities of teaching, parenting, and marriage in the wake of the pandemic. With deadpan humor and a keen eye for the strangeness of our days, Negative Space follows a week in the life of a part-time high school English teacher. At home, her two children, increasingly restless in the wake of the pandemic, ask constant questions that flit from the weirdness of television shows to casual conversations about mortality. Her husband, always on business calls with Hong Kong at odd hours, shows up for meals only occasionally. At school, her students seem increasingly disconnected, and some put worrying details of their lives into their creative writing assignments. And then there’s the possibly inappropriate interaction she thinks she saw between her boss and a student. . . . Filled with sly observations about our off-kilter days, Negative Space is a witty and resonant novel about the challenges of motherhood, the question of what we owe the people around us, and the search for normalcy in a fractured world.

Characters:

Main character  is the unnamed female character, an English teacher who is pretty an everyday woman who worries about things both big and small, from whether or not an illicit affair is happening in front of her, to whether or not she is a good mom to her son and daughter. The other characters are basically seen through her eyes, which means that the reader doesn't really get to know them as well as they hope. The time, I should mention is sometime after COVID, perhaps a post Covid readjustment period. 

Theme:

Sims as a novel 

Plot:

The story is in first person narrative from the unnamed English teacher's point of view and it begins on Monday as the reader is taken through the five days, watching as she is worrying about her family, her husband, her students and her co-workers. There is no clear resolution and life just goes on, and yes, I wanted for the novel to go on. Mundane tasks such as shopping for grocery or calling her husband or cooking or even the frantic self assurance that she is a good mom amidst so many upheavals are all too relatable to the readers. The stopping point is at Saturday where more questions are given rather than answered. 

Author Information:
(From goodreads)

Gillian Linden received her MFA from Columbia University. She is a 2011 winner of the Henfield Prize for fiction. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband.

Opinion:

This is a definitely slice of life novel where it seems as if the character takes it day by day rather than having a straight plot where everything resolves. I don't think I've met a slice of life type novel where it truly feels like slice of life. For one week, or five days rather, the reader is taken into a school in New York and follows an English teacher who has to make a lot of decisions regarding her life, friends and family. The mundane such as shopping for groceries as well as picking up children and checking in with a loved one are included instead of brushed away, thus it feels all too real. (Perhaps Sims games in a book?) 

This was given for review

4 out of 5
(0: Stay away unless a masochist 1: Good for insomnia 2: Horrible but readable; 3: Readable and quickly forgettable, 4: Good, enjoyable 5: Buy it, keep it and never let it go.)