Glass Houses; The Paris Trilogy; How to Build Impossible Things – reviews
Glass Houses
Francesca Reece
Tinder Press, £20, pp336
Desire, class and Welsh nationalism prove a combustible combination in this brooding literary romance. It’s set in north Wales and centres on a modernist house beside a wooded lake, all but abandoned by its absentee English owners. Forester Gethin has been making illicit visits to the property since boyhood and the place has become almost sacred to him, so it’s a wrench to learn that Londoners have bought it. Then he discovers who they are: his first love, Olwen – the daughter of incomer artists and a “local” by birth alone – and her wealthy husband. Narrative momentum and flickers of menace are enhanced by prose that’s atmospheric and spiky.
The Paris Trilogy: A Life in Three Stories
Colombe Schneck (translated by Lauren Elkin and Natasha Lehrer)
Simon & Schuster, £14.99, pp240
Growing up in the 1970s and 80s amid Paris’s intellectual bourgeoisie, Colombe Schneck was ambitious and wilful. Then, aged 17, she became pregnant. While her choice to have an abortion was never in question, it felt as if her body had betrayed her, revealing the precariousness of her freedom. The episode haunts a vigorous midlife reckoning whose three slender volumes also consider a long friendship cut short by illness and a transformative fiftysomething love affair. Whether she’s writing about passion or perfecting the front crawl, there’s a frankness to Schneck’s meditations on womanhood – crisply translated here by Lauren Elkin and Natasha Lehrer – that is electrifying.
How to Build Impossible Things: Lessons in Life and Carpentry
Mark Ellison
Penguin, £10.99, pp304 (paperback)
Carpentry may have seemed an unlikely career path for Columbia dropout Mark Ellison, but over the course of four decades he’s become one of New York’s most in-demand craftsmen, making tangible the high-end visions of architects and interior designers. His client list has included David Bowie and Woody Allen, and there’s an undeniable through-the-keyhole thrill to be had as he describes beaux-arts townhouses and penthouse palazzos, but this memoir also offers something more: a primer for anyone who aspires to do anything well. Find something fascinating, listen and learn, practise daily. Don’t forget to celebrate progress. It’s sturdy advice, delivered with humour and the occasional splinter.
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