A review by bergamotandbooks
Astra by Cedar Bowers

5.0

5 STARS

If you could see yourself as others saw you, would you be any closer to the truth of who you really are? In the tradition of Olive Kitteridge and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, Astra is a beguiling debut novel that reveals the different faces of one enigmatic woman, as seen through the eyes of ten people she encounters over the course of six decades.

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ASTRA is a very interesting novel, as it's namesake is never the narrator. Reading like biographical memoir, we learn about Astra through the eyes of and thoughts of those that she interacts with over her lifetime. Full of unreliable narrators, I found myself enjoying the act of piecing together the puzzle to figure out who the "real" Astra was.

Realistic, bittersweet and very well written.