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frank_l's review
emotional
hopeful
reflective
relaxing
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
jupiterbb's review
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
niamhhmulvaney's review against another edition
hopeful
lighthearted
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
whatanniereadsnext's review
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
This was one of my Blind Date with a Book picks from my library. The pickup line read: a couple moves to the Irish countryside with their dogs to escape society. I have to say I had never heard of this book before unwrapping it and probably wouldn’t have picked it up if I saw it but I am so glad I did. A quiet novel that captivated me through its poetic writing. I realized at about 50 pages in I was learning about the characters without their dialogue and didn’t miss it. So much of this book is written about the world around the characters than about the characters themselves yet I felt like I knew them well. Such a unique and quirky read , written with a cadence that makes you slow down and absorb the words.
mkhay's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.0
sam_bizar_wilcox's review
4.0
Bell and Sigh (how dreamy are these names?) move into a cottage in the Irish countryside, at the foot of a large mountain in a calm--albeit stormy--landscape. With their dogs and tender affection, they build a life together in relative seclusion. A pandemic piece if there ever was one.
Seven Steeples is more than just an exercise in isolation, however. As it so often draws attention to vision--to lines of sight, to eyes--and sound--our characters' names, the physicality of the landscape, and the things these characters say to one another--, it seems to ask the reader how what can clearly be seen and heard (can see and hear) can so easily be lost or vanish. And were they visible and audible from the beginning, anyway?
It's wrong to say that anything is actually lost in this novel. Rather, things just evolve or change as the weight of time and text run past. The characters that open the book become something else by its close. The cottage changes when Bell and Sigh move in, it houses all their belongings, it becomes host to their home-improvement projects. Early interior changes in the house forewarn what Baume has up her writerly sleeves, so clearly defining Bell and Sigh in relief of each other, so clearly giving them their quirks and physical characteristics.
Bell performs rituals by touching things. So too does this novel, as these objects become part of another ritual performance, wherein these two characters become one--indistinguishable and unseperated in the text. The way this happens is so gradual, by a process of touching (or observing) all these little details about their lives. Their life.
But, again, could we ever really see or hear them? Their names suggest not dialogue, but the whispers that were left off the page. They, too, are foggy, taking shape together (taking each other's shapes) but remaining largely inscrutable. They are a pair captured in a journey to leave the world behind. And leave they did: from the world, we begin to see them only as faint silhouettes from the mountain, occasionally growing more clear, then fogging up again.
The movement into the country, into the home, and the mountain which beckons them (which dares them), opens a conversation with The Odyssey. There's something Classical about their journey and homegoing (nostos), about the shrine they build in the house, about the repeated word "eye" (like a Cyclops) that fits together as sort of modern/millennial epic. But the move and ascent and merging are so quiet, so subtle. A millennial epic about taking up refuge in an old house on the edge of the world is, shockingly, restrained.
Evoking the poetic form of Classical Greek epics, Baume's book is really a long, luxurious prose poem. It's lines are lingering and swoon-worthy, with frequent line breaks and spacing , almost like the fragments of Sappho (which, too, wonders about the self, about vision, and the epic tradition). There's also something mystical--like St. John's ascent of Mt. Carmel--about the book, wherein the peak opens one to the divine.
Is there real, religious divinity here? I'm not sure. But Baume's daring and ambitious work, which imagines how two are one, is definitely divine.
Seven Steeples is more than just an exercise in isolation, however. As it so often draws attention to vision--to lines of sight, to eyes--and sound--our characters' names, the physicality of the landscape, and the things these characters say to one another--, it seems to ask the reader how what can clearly be seen and heard (can see and hear) can so easily be lost or vanish. And were they visible and audible from the beginning, anyway?
It's wrong to say that anything is actually lost in this novel. Rather, things just evolve or change as the weight of time and text run past. The characters that open the book become something else by its close. The cottage changes when Bell and Sigh move in, it houses all their belongings, it becomes host to their home-improvement projects. Early interior changes in the house forewarn what Baume has up her writerly sleeves, so clearly defining Bell and Sigh in relief of each other, so clearly giving them their quirks and physical characteristics.
Bell performs rituals by touching things. So too does this novel, as these objects become part of another ritual performance, wherein these two characters become one--indistinguishable and unseperated in the text. The way this happens is so gradual, by a process of touching (or observing) all these little details about their lives. Their life.
But, again, could we ever really see or hear them? Their names suggest not dialogue, but the whispers that were left off the page. They, too, are foggy, taking shape together (taking each other's shapes) but remaining largely inscrutable. They are a pair captured in a journey to leave the world behind. And leave they did: from the world, we begin to see them only as faint silhouettes from the mountain, occasionally growing more clear, then fogging up again.
The movement into the country, into the home, and the mountain which beckons them (which dares them), opens a conversation with The Odyssey. There's something Classical about their journey and homegoing (nostos), about the shrine they build in the house, about the repeated word "eye" (like a Cyclops) that fits together as sort of modern/millennial epic. But the move and ascent and merging are so quiet, so subtle. A millennial epic about taking up refuge in an old house on the edge of the world is, shockingly, restrained.
Evoking the poetic form of Classical Greek epics, Baume's book is really a long, luxurious prose poem. It's lines are lingering and swoon-worthy, with frequent line breaks and spacing , almost like the fragments of Sappho (which, too, wonders about the self, about vision, and the epic tradition). There's also something mystical--like St. John's ascent of Mt. Carmel--about the book, wherein the peak opens one to the divine.
Is there real, religious divinity here? I'm not sure. But Baume's daring and ambitious work, which imagines how two are one, is definitely divine.