Her downward spiral is textbook: slovenliness, drinking, insomnia, drinking to combat insomnia. Nearly every character is endowed with psychological peculiarity and the freedom to surprise, and this grants a riveting, kinetic quality to the simplest domestic scenes.The one exception is Winnie herself, whom Kupersmith keeps on a much tighter leash. The same careening sense of possibility that energizes the novel at its grandest scale infuses its interiority. One of Kupersmith’s most dazzling feats is that she manages to slot her characters into this machinery while also letting them feel invigoratingly autonomous. As the coincidences piled up, I had the uncanny sense that I was witnessing the inexorable machinery of fate. Yet Kupersmith convinces the reader that these characters are drawn together not by narrative necessity, but by larger forces.
Like many narratives that braid together large casts across time and place, Kupersmith’s relies on numerous improbable coincidences to tie its stories together.A reader could be forgiven for thinking that Saigon is a city of 10 instead of nearly 10 million. For a novel that sustains such a menacing mood, Build Your House Around My Body is frequently very funny. The novel also deliciously skewers backpacker and expat cultures in Southeast Asia. Her sensory language is at once bold and perfectly precise. It helps that Kupersmith is a brilliant technician of the small moment, the just-right observation. There are so many ways this novel could have lost its balance instead, its too-much-ness makes for a thrilling read, acrobatic and filled with verve. But Kupersmith proves herself a fearless driver who revels in the daunting challenge she has set for herself. Reading it provides a sensation not unlike riding on a motorbike overloaded with passengers and wares: It careens, it tilts and at times I wondered if it would reach its destination without a crash.
That is this novel’s power: It followed me into my days, refusing to release me.
0 kommentar(er)
