THE MODERN by Anna Kate Blair
I was lucky enough to recently win a copy of The Modern by author Anna Kate Blair from the team at the Shameless podcast. I was very excited because Anna is an Australian/New Zealand writer and the book is about Sophia, an Aussie living in New York City and working at MoMA, which is my favourite museum. I have a degree in Art and Design so I thought this would be a great novel.
Sophia is a fellow at MoMA and finds herself newly engaged to her American boyfriend, Robert, just prior to him taking off to walk the Appalachian Trail - his goal of many years, before he commences work at a university. Sophia stays in New York and spends the summer grappling with her ideas around marriage, her sexual identity (she uneasily identifies herself as queer) and her future in the art world of New York. It would seem she has little love lost for Australia or any desire to return there.
Sophia spends a lot of time in this novel mooning over an unattainable young artist she meets, while reminiscing about a woman she left behind in Australia. She also spends a lot of time trying to convincer herself that her boyfriend is perfect for her in all the ways that should matter to her (but don’t). She is resistant to the life he is offering her, without knowing what it is she wants from life herself. At almost 30 years old, I don’t have a huge issue with that - some days I think I am still working these questions out myself. But Sophia is very “in her head” and by novel’s end, I am not sure she is any further along the path to figuring it out than when it started.
My really big concern with this novel is that there is an awful lot of telling and not a lot of showing in this narrative. To be honest, I found Sophia to be pretty shallow, for someone with a PhD in Art History. Sophia doesn’t have a lot of close, intimate friends, and it’s not hard to see why - she lacks substance. She simply wasn’t a character I empathised with in any way and her happiness or motivation to figure herself out wasn’t something I invested in.
At the end of the novel, I felt like there was little closure or character progression for Sophia.
This isn’t a terrible book, I just didn’t love it. I did really appreciate though, the opportunity to read it and I hope the author perseveres with writing as I think there is something there - it just didn’t hit the mark, for me.