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Another one of those books that I still think about, months later. This is a wild, WILD ride. "recursive loops through the mind of a woman who is breaking down from not making the art she absolutely must make” is how Alexander Chee describes this novel. The opening of this book is what drew me in. Alma and her family live in Vermont, and raise sheep and chickens. She stays home with her children while her husband works at a nearby college. She's bored of this life and regretful; along with a plethora of other complicated feelings, and one night, she decides to get in her car and leave it all behind; bound for New York after a growing fascination of someone she began to follow on Instagram, a ceramist named Celeste, becomes an obsession. She wants the life that Celeste has, but is it really greener on the other side? -Ashley
— From Ashley's PicksA "startlingly original" novel of "recursive loops through the mind of a woman who is breaking down from not making the art she absolutely must make" (Alexander Chee, Paris Review).
Alma and her family live close to the land, raising chickens and sheep. While her husband works at a nearby college, she stays home with their young children, cleans, searches for secondhand goods online, and reads books by the women writers she adores. Then, one night, she abruptly leaves it all behind--speeding through the darkness, away from their Vermont homestead, bound for New York.
In a series of flashbacks, Alma reveals the circumstances and choices that led to this moment: the joys and claustrophobia of their remote life; her fears and uncertainties about motherhood; the painfully awkward faculty dinners; her feelings of loneliness and failure; and her growing fascination with Celeste, a mysterious ceramicist and self-loving doppelg nger who becomes an obsession for Alma.
A fable both blistering and surreal, The Shame is a propulsive, funny, and thought-provoking debut about a woman in isolation, whose mind--fueled by capitalism, motherhood, and the search for meaningful art--attempts to betray her.
Honors for The Shame: