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A review by kylieayn
Glass/Fire by Mandira Pattnaik
hopeful
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
Following the lives of an Indian family—particularly the daughters—and those who surround them throughout varied points in their journeys, Glass/Fire needles into the pushes, pulls, pains, and peace each character experiences with cultural expectations, personal dreams, and relationships. The first few stay with an unnamed speaker, the eldest daughter in the central family, as their family migrates back to India from the United States, then expands to include the intertwined stories of neighbors, lovers, and more. Themes around love (familial, romantic, and self) are found, lost, recovered, and retired; visited and revisited with each character, all with different motivations and outcomes as they decide how to deal with the pressure from their families and communities.
I was particularly taken with how Pattnaik worked in physics throughout the first half of the book, weaving images and metaphors of scientific interactions, concepts, and transformations in with the stories of the central women. The imagistic, sonic, and metaphorical treasures of this conceit packs this book with wealth.
My favorite use of this was “Lambda,” in which the unnamed eldest daughter remembers talking and playing with her grandfather, affectionately nicknamed “Lambda” after the cosmological constant, under the stars. Not only because I thought it was the sweetest moment in the book and just made me smile, but because the use of astronomical concepts were written both into the storyline and the authorial figurations: “Lambda” being his nickname because he looked like the symbol, Λ, which is a clever characterization tool; the two of them sitting under the Scorpio constellation and, at the same time telling the reader that that is the narrator’s astrological sign, Lambda pointing to it and telling her that “that’s where heart of the universe is located” which shows the depth of his love for her; them making a game out of the Wild Ducks cluster and surrounding constellations; the acceleration of galaxies away from each other mirroring the family moving away from Lambda, as well as the universe’s eternal expansion pairing with Lambda’s swiftly coming death; and how all of this helps set up the narrator’s attention and fascination (as well as the authorial preoccupation) with physics and science.
It’s interesting to see how this preoccupation (both of the unnamed daughter’s and the author’s) trickles away in favor of more “natural,” earthy images. Harvesting (land and animals), fruit and their trees, tides and beaches, air and light, are mentioned more than the science and base materials behind them, and then even more man-made images like utensils/tools, clothing, vehicles and technology, and plastic. As the second half of the book shows the central characters older and older, this is a cunning shift to me—the ingredients of people and places and pressures have met, mixed, and reacted/combusted/transmuted, and so the raw materials (the characters young) have aged into results and are more concerned with uses. The later return of the science of glass in “Cullet” through “In a Room — A Chandelier Aglow,” more fixated now on the blowing, utility, and recyclability rather than creation from grit and heat and pressure, rounds out the titular focus.
There were a couple “plot holes” that I found myself confused about. The first being the number of sisters in the central family—I read it as only two, the unnamed eldest daughter and then Lily, but I’ve seen other reviewers read it as three. Because the elder daughter is never named, I can see how the stories with an ambiguous narrator could be read as two different girls, however I found those pieces to depict a linear account of one girl’s life.
The second is the situation of the opening, titular piece, “Glass/Fire.” The speaker, along with her best friend Annabel and another girl whose name she doesn’t recall, looks back at an instance when they were sixteen year old and humiliated a couple of boys from their class for spying on them. While I enjoyed the poetic style and syntax employed through this piece, with its evocative images around heat, I had trouble understanding both what was happening in the scene, and the actions and context that led to it. Furthermore, the final line, “And still later, how that day had enough ammunition to break one of the boys, shatter him like glass,” piqued my interest and led me to believe that this boy and his breaking would come back somewhere in the book to explain or extrapolate. However, this is never returned to, so just leaves me questioning its inclusion. While I understand that this book is primarily about the girls and women introduced, there are sections (such as “—Stone/Diamond—” from “Carbon is a Stranded Stone”) that focuses on a man woven in later in the book, so I felt there could’ve been an opportunity to tie this pondersome “Glass/Fire” moment back in.
Overall, Glass/Fire is a very enthralling book. Pattnaik has excellent command of depicting the passage of time and how her characters grow and mold throughout it. The poetic quality of her writing was ripe for the novella-in-flash form, blending prose structure with a highly figurative style in a way that felt in-tune with the central characterizations and themes of personal-versus-imposed desires/expectations. An engaging read full of women that I rooted for the whole way through.
My favorite use of this was “Lambda,” in which the unnamed eldest daughter remembers talking and playing with her grandfather, affectionately nicknamed “Lambda” after the cosmological constant, under the stars. Not only because I thought it was the sweetest moment in the book and just made me smile, but because the use of astronomical concepts were written both into the storyline and the authorial figurations: “Lambda” being his nickname because he looked like the symbol, Λ, which is a clever characterization tool; the two of them sitting under the Scorpio constellation and, at the same time telling the reader that that is the narrator’s astrological sign, Lambda pointing to it and telling her that “that’s where heart of the universe is located” which shows the depth of his love for her; them making a game out of the Wild Ducks cluster and surrounding constellations; the acceleration of galaxies away from each other mirroring the family moving away from Lambda, as well as the universe’s eternal expansion pairing with Lambda’s swiftly coming death; and how all of this helps set up the narrator’s attention and fascination (as well as the authorial preoccupation) with physics and science.
It’s interesting to see how this preoccupation (both of the unnamed daughter’s and the author’s) trickles away in favor of more “natural,” earthy images. Harvesting (land and animals), fruit and their trees, tides and beaches, air and light, are mentioned more than the science and base materials behind them, and then even more man-made images like utensils/tools, clothing, vehicles and technology, and plastic. As the second half of the book shows the central characters older and older, this is a cunning shift to me—the ingredients of people and places and pressures have met, mixed, and reacted/combusted/transmuted, and so the raw materials (the characters young) have aged into results and are more concerned with uses. The later return of the science of glass in “Cullet” through “In a Room — A Chandelier Aglow,” more fixated now on the blowing, utility, and recyclability rather than creation from grit and heat and pressure, rounds out the titular focus.
There were a couple “plot holes” that I found myself confused about. The first being the number of sisters in the central family—I read it as only two, the unnamed eldest daughter and then Lily, but I’ve seen other reviewers read it as three. Because the elder daughter is never named, I can see how the stories with an ambiguous narrator could be read as two different girls, however I found those pieces to depict a linear account of one girl’s life.
The second is the situation of the opening, titular piece, “Glass/Fire.” The speaker, along with her best friend Annabel and another girl whose name she doesn’t recall, looks back at an instance when they were sixteen year old and humiliated a couple of boys from their class for spying on them. While I enjoyed the poetic style and syntax employed through this piece, with its evocative images around heat, I had trouble understanding both what was happening in the scene, and the actions and context that led to it. Furthermore, the final line, “And still later, how that day had enough ammunition to break one of the boys, shatter him like glass,” piqued my interest and led me to believe that this boy and his breaking would come back somewhere in the book to explain or extrapolate. However, this is never returned to, so just leaves me questioning its inclusion. While I understand that this book is primarily about the girls and women introduced, there are sections (such as “—Stone/Diamond—” from “Carbon is a Stranded Stone”) that focuses on a man woven in later in the book, so I felt there could’ve been an opportunity to tie this pondersome “Glass/Fire” moment back in.
Overall, Glass/Fire is a very enthralling book. Pattnaik has excellent command of depicting the passage of time and how her characters grow and mold throughout it. The poetic quality of her writing was ripe for the novella-in-flash form, blending prose structure with a highly figurative style in a way that felt in-tune with the central characterizations and themes of personal-versus-imposed desires/expectations. An engaging read full of women that I rooted for the whole way through.
*Review of complimentary ARC from the publisher, Querencia Press.