A review by kleonard
Collected Works by Lydia Sandgren

2.0

In this enormous novel, the central character, Cecilia, is off-stage almost the entire time, which is too bad, because her story--that of a woman who decides that she is not happy being a mother--is a very real and under-represented one. But the bulk of the story is about the friendships of Martin Berg, a would-be writer who can never get his act together enough to actually write anything to its completion. There's a lot of Martin faffing about while his best friend becomes an alcoholic but prolific and lauded painter. People smoke a ton, and use oral tobacco, which is just gross. People move through Martin's life, he gets a soft landing at a career through a friend, and generally annoyed this reader quite a lot. I could see why his wife left, and why his kids don't want to spend much time with him. Overall, the novel's got a nice unreliable-narrator vibe going on, but I can't really recommend it.