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A review by gregzimmerman
Load Bearing by Jane Hartsock
5.0
4.5 but rounding up.
Oh yeah, we love a good literary historical mystery. This is a novel about how when you become interested in and then obsessed with a piece of art (in this case a 100-year-old mansion -- yes, architecture is art), it's just as easy to become interested in and obsessed with the story of the artist. (Roland Barthes and his "author is dead" theory can be damned in this book lol.) That's especially true if your personal life is falling apart, as Hannah's is in this novel, and the artist (an architect named Andrew Decker) has a mysterious and dramatic story, as he does in this novel.
This is an amazing accomplished debut -- it's a self-published novel a friend recommended I read. It's very good to take a chance once in a while on a book like this that hadn't been on your radar and is well outside your reading comfort zone. Good things often happen, and they sure did here.
Oh yeah, we love a good literary historical mystery. This is a novel about how when you become interested in and then obsessed with a piece of art (in this case a 100-year-old mansion -- yes, architecture is art), it's just as easy to become interested in and obsessed with the story of the artist. (Roland Barthes and his "author is dead" theory can be damned in this book lol.) That's especially true if your personal life is falling apart, as Hannah's is in this novel, and the artist (an architect named Andrew Decker) has a mysterious and dramatic story, as he does in this novel.
This is an amazing accomplished debut -- it's a self-published novel a friend recommended I read. It's very good to take a chance once in a while on a book like this that hadn't been on your radar and is well outside your reading comfort zone. Good things often happen, and they sure did here.