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A review by ridgewaygirl
Self-Portrait with Boy by Rachel Lyon
5.0
There's a particular kind of character who just hits my sweet spot. A woman who makes a lot of bad decisions and ruins her own life is always interesting to read about; after all, what is fiction without conflict and what kind of conflict is more interesting than the stuff people bring on themselves? This novel features that main character. Lu is a young woman living in a terrible loft apartment in a sketchy part of Brooklyn in the nineties, before gentrification. She works at an expensive grocery store that allows her to pay her rent (most of the time) and buy film as she works on becoming a photographer. She is working on a series of self-portraits when it happens, she takes a truly great picture. Lu is sure that this is the key to getting her foot in the door of the art world, but who will she have to hurt to get her chance?
The very act of recall is like trying to photograph the sky. The infinite and ever-shifting colors of memory, its rippling light, cannot really be captured. Show someone who has never seen the sky a picture of the sky and you show them a picture of nothing.
This is a well-written debut novel that really captures a time and place, when if you were willing to live in a run down and rodent-infested space where the landlord is desperate to get people out, you could afford to live in New York. Where your neighbors could be people with serious issues or they could be artists using the space to create art. This is also a wonderful depiction of a person who longs to be an artist, to support herself with her pictures and to find a place within that milieu. I'm eager to read whatever Rachel Lyon writes next, even if it probably won't be exactly this book.
The very act of recall is like trying to photograph the sky. The infinite and ever-shifting colors of memory, its rippling light, cannot really be captured. Show someone who has never seen the sky a picture of the sky and you show them a picture of nothing.
This is a well-written debut novel that really captures a time and place, when if you were willing to live in a run down and rodent-infested space where the landlord is desperate to get people out, you could afford to live in New York. Where your neighbors could be people with serious issues or they could be artists using the space to create art. This is also a wonderful depiction of a person who longs to be an artist, to support herself with her pictures and to find a place within that milieu. I'm eager to read whatever Rachel Lyon writes next, even if it probably won't be exactly this book.