Christine Schutt

David Winters wrote a sound, glowing review for this book in the LARB. While it had been on my radar, his review is what made me take the plunge.

While the story here is fairly commonplace, about the trappings and miscommunications in interpersonal relationships, Schutt's prose is magisterial: it truly is the primary focus in Prosperous Friends.

There is a temptation perhaps to call Schutt's prose poetic, but this is a phrase so often used when discussing novelists' prose that it's hardly fitting here. By "poetic" I don't mean lush or flowery; I don't mean an attempt to suggest dreams or fantasies (although there is some of that here, too). What I mean by Schutt's poetic prose is that it's very technical and formal, yet at the same time loose and fluid—fluid, at least, in adherence to its own rhythms. Assonance, dissonance, syntactical ruptures: all of these formal and technical elements abound in this novel, causing us to be both within and without the characters: as Winters says in his review, "Schutt has mastered an intricate indirectness."

There is a Jamesian distancing here, and I think this might well frustrate some readers who may have picked up Prosperous Friends based on the plot summary; however, the prose is something to be marveled at, relished, and also puzzled over at times. I definitely look forward to reading more of Schutt's work after this wonderful performance—for there's no other word to describe the skill evident here, a truly wonderful performance.… (mere)

In the story of our lives, nothing much happens but that we drive past the same town sometimes and remember.

Schutt���s prose shines here, and it���s something I tried to examine at some length in my review of her most recent novel Prosperous Friends, so I���ll point you there; in sum, though, Schutt���s use of poetic rhythm, discordant clauses, and lush, often archaic textures to sentences are the true focal point of her prose���the narrative is simply a boon.

In her collection Nightwork, Schutt���s stories center almost exclusively on the erotic lives of women and children, and also the ways in which violence, economics, and internalized gender expectations are interwoven in one���s relationships, be they with lovers or with siblings. ������Schutt���s prose is unflinching, and her subject matter is often oppressive: here we have, among other subjects, a woman being intimate with her father in the opening (and strongest) story in the collection; ���sisters��� fleeing from a seemingly misogynistic cult; a woman who plays at kissing with her son so that he will learn the art; daughters facing their mother���s mortality as they sift through all of the objects she has collected; and a lament for a teacher with whom one narrator has had an affair throughout both of their adult lives, a moving and disturbing story whose title is taken from Emily Dickinson���s poem ���Because I Could Not Stop for Death.���

A master craftsman and an impeccable, wholly original prose stylist, Schutt���s work demands to be read carefully for the luminous ways in which it renders textually the psychological and perverse cadences she tackles thematically.

4.5 stars… (mere)