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matthewkeating 's review for:
Couplets: A Love Story
by Maggie Millner
Maggie Milner's "Couplets" is a wonderful book, a glowing meditation on the self. It’s not exactly a novel, but bears resemblance to one; a single story is told over poems written (deftly, excellently) in rhyming couplets, contrasted with sections of often dreamlike, luminous and vivid prose.
The book follows a woman’s coming into herself, primarily through the lens of her sexuality: her long-term heterosexual relationship implodes when she comes to the realization that she has (for a long time) wanted to sleep with women.
The narrator’s difficulties breaking into a new path of life and leaving a fairly comfortable one behind is a big part of this book; but I think the notion of self-identity is expertly handled, and Milner gets at something deeper and more universal (I’m a little terrified of using that word!) than the narrator’s specific situation. There’s meaningful discourse about what it even means to be a self; the struggle with the individual at large, as almost an institution, bleeds into the question of autobiographical work and the ways culture tells us what we as writers are “allowed” or “supposed” to write about in fiction.
"Couplets" feels like something spun out from a single thread, followed very patiently; it’s the kind of debut one wants to have, something very carefully considered, poems and prose both elegant and musical. A reminder that the principal difficulty of discovering who we are is that no one else can do it for us.
The book follows a woman’s coming into herself, primarily through the lens of her sexuality: her long-term heterosexual relationship implodes when she comes to the realization that she has (for a long time) wanted to sleep with women.
The narrator’s difficulties breaking into a new path of life and leaving a fairly comfortable one behind is a big part of this book; but I think the notion of self-identity is expertly handled, and Milner gets at something deeper and more universal (I’m a little terrified of using that word!) than the narrator’s specific situation. There’s meaningful discourse about what it even means to be a self; the struggle with the individual at large, as almost an institution, bleeds into the question of autobiographical work and the ways culture tells us what we as writers are “allowed” or “supposed” to write about in fiction.
"Couplets" feels like something spun out from a single thread, followed very patiently; it’s the kind of debut one wants to have, something very carefully considered, poems and prose both elegant and musical. A reminder that the principal difficulty of discovering who we are is that no one else can do it for us.