What do you think?
Rate this book
The Deceptions
An explosive tale of art and myth, desire and betrayal, from New York Times best-selling author Jill Bialosky
Something terrible has happened and I don't know what to do. An unnamed narrator's life is unraveling. Her only child has left home, and her twenty-year marriage is strained. Anticipation about her soon-to-be-released book of poetry looms. She seeks answers to the paradoxes of love, desire, and parenthood among the Greek and Roman gods at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As she passes her days teaching at a boy's prep school, spending her off hours sequestered in the museum's austere galleries, she is haunted by memories of a yearlong friendship with a colleague, a fellow poet, struggling with his craft. As secret betrayals and deceptions come to light, and rage threatens to overwhelm her, the pantheon assume remarkably vivid lives of their own, forcing her to choose between reality and myth in an effort to free herself of the patriarchal constraints of the past and embrace a new vision for her future.
The Deceptions is a page-turning and seductively told exploration of female sexuality and ambition. It is also a brilliantly conceived investigation of a life caught between the dueling magnetic poles of intimacy in a marriage and the privacy necessary for creative endeavor. Celebrated poet, memoirist, and novelist Jill Bialosky has reached new and daring heights in her boldest work yet.
Something terrible has happened and I don't know what to do. An unnamed narrator's life is unraveling. Her only child has left home, and her twenty-year marriage is strained. Anticipation about her soon-to-be-released book of poetry looms. She seeks answers to the paradoxes of love, desire, and parenthood among the Greek and Roman gods at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As she passes her days teaching at a boy's prep school, spending her off hours sequestered in the museum's austere galleries, she is haunted by memories of a yearlong friendship with a colleague, a fellow poet, struggling with his craft. As secret betrayals and deceptions come to light, and rage threatens to overwhelm her, the pantheon assume remarkably vivid lives of their own, forcing her to choose between reality and myth in an effort to free herself of the patriarchal constraints of the past and embrace a new vision for her future.
The Deceptions is a page-turning and seductively told exploration of female sexuality and ambition. It is also a brilliantly conceived investigation of a life caught between the dueling magnetic poles of intimacy in a marriage and the privacy necessary for creative endeavor. Celebrated poet, memoirist, and novelist Jill Bialosky has reached new and daring heights in her boldest work yet.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published September 6, 2022
About the author
Jill Bialosky
16 books109 followersJill Bialosky was born in Cleveland, Ohio. She studied for her undergraduate degree at Ohio University and received a Master of Arts degree from the Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Fine Arts degree from University of Iowa Writer's Workshop.
Her collections of poems are Subterranean (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001) and The End of Desire (1997). Bialosky is also the author of the novel House Under Snow (2002) and The Life Room (2007) and co-editor, with Helen Schulman, of the anthology Wanting A Child (1998).
Her poems and essays appear in The New Yorker, O Magazine, Paris Review, The Nation, The New Republic, Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review among other publications.
Bialosky has received a number of awards including the Elliot Coleman Award in Poetry. She is currently an editor at W. W. Norton & Company and lives in New York City.
Her collections of poems are Subterranean (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001) and The End of Desire (1997). Bialosky is also the author of the novel House Under Snow (2002) and The Life Room (2007) and co-editor, with Helen Schulman, of the anthology Wanting A Child (1998).
Her poems and essays appear in The New Yorker, O Magazine, Paris Review, The Nation, The New Republic, Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review among other publications.
Bialosky has received a number of awards including the Elliot Coleman Award in Poetry. She is currently an editor at W. W. Norton & Company and lives in New York City.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 83 reviews
December 31, 2022
I have mixed feelings about “The Deceptions” by Jill Bialosky. Perhaps it’s because author Bialosky is known for her poetry, and her unnamed narrator is a poet. The vagueness of poetry has always illuded me. This story is one that I’m not sure if I understood what Bialosky wanted to achieve.
Our narrator is a high school teacher, working at a private boy’s high school. Her husband is dismissive of her in so many ways. He complains that she’s always in her head, her own universe. He demeans her at every chance he gets to the point that she begins to doubt herself. From the start, the reader understands that the marriage is not healthy. He loves to watch sports. She loves to go to the museum. He sleeps in his son’s room while she sleeps in the master bedroom. There is much reference to Sylvia Plath, which provides a foreboding mood.
They have a son, who is a freshman in a private college in Maine. Her relationship with him is strained; adding further tension is that she and her husband disagree on healthy parenting.
So, her home life is on shaky ground. But there is more which is alluded to; there has been a struggle or problem with the narrator’s new book of poetry. The reader is left adrift. We do learn that the narrator frequents the Metropolitan Museum of Art, notably the ancient arts and myths. We learn a lot about Greek myth, specifically Zeus, Odysseus, and Hercules. Bialosky adds photos of the statues, artifacts, and paintings. I felt like I was getting a docent’s view of the Met! The narrator is transfixed on Zeus and his need to conquer women, almost always in rape form, according to the narrator. The narrator’s pondering is fed by museum viewings.
The book is structure in Days: Day 1, Day 2 etc. Within each day, we know where the narrator is, for example the Salon or the bus. At the end of Day 1, she writes “Something terrible has happened and I don’t know what to do.” Yes, the story is written with a tragic feel and expectation.
Next, we learn of the visiting poet at the narrator’s work. She ruminates over the year that the visiting poet was at her school. As women, we’ve all had experience like the visiting poet’s (hence the me-too movement). Bialosky wrote the struggle women have with groping men well. The visiting poet provided her with attention she didn’t get at home. He wanted to know about her poetry and her ideas. She fell victim to his predatory nature.
Yet, I was frustrated with the narrator. She didn’t stand up for herself in her marriage. The visiting poet was a man who should have been shut down. Perhaps Bialosky is showing how tender artists can be manipulated. Our narrator is not a force of nature; she is docile.
As noted in a Kirkus review, “Bialosky’s premise here—that female artists are subjected to artistic, emotional, psychological, and physical ravages that have prevented their full blooming”. I am grateful that Bialosky has opened my eyes to the fact of male artists appropriating female artists works and claiming them as their own. The final few pages note different male authors who stand accused.
This is an interesting book. It’s almost “dreamy” in it’s telling. It’s very passive. It’s close to “stream of consciousness writing”. The narrator’s passivity drove me mad. I didn’t like the narrator. I didn’t like any of the characters. Yet, there’s a message there that is important.
Our narrator is a high school teacher, working at a private boy’s high school. Her husband is dismissive of her in so many ways. He complains that she’s always in her head, her own universe. He demeans her at every chance he gets to the point that she begins to doubt herself. From the start, the reader understands that the marriage is not healthy. He loves to watch sports. She loves to go to the museum. He sleeps in his son’s room while she sleeps in the master bedroom. There is much reference to Sylvia Plath, which provides a foreboding mood.
They have a son, who is a freshman in a private college in Maine. Her relationship with him is strained; adding further tension is that she and her husband disagree on healthy parenting.
So, her home life is on shaky ground. But there is more which is alluded to; there has been a struggle or problem with the narrator’s new book of poetry. The reader is left adrift. We do learn that the narrator frequents the Metropolitan Museum of Art, notably the ancient arts and myths. We learn a lot about Greek myth, specifically Zeus, Odysseus, and Hercules. Bialosky adds photos of the statues, artifacts, and paintings. I felt like I was getting a docent’s view of the Met! The narrator is transfixed on Zeus and his need to conquer women, almost always in rape form, according to the narrator. The narrator’s pondering is fed by museum viewings.
The book is structure in Days: Day 1, Day 2 etc. Within each day, we know where the narrator is, for example the Salon or the bus. At the end of Day 1, she writes “Something terrible has happened and I don’t know what to do.” Yes, the story is written with a tragic feel and expectation.
Next, we learn of the visiting poet at the narrator’s work. She ruminates over the year that the visiting poet was at her school. As women, we’ve all had experience like the visiting poet’s (hence the me-too movement). Bialosky wrote the struggle women have with groping men well. The visiting poet provided her with attention she didn’t get at home. He wanted to know about her poetry and her ideas. She fell victim to his predatory nature.
Yet, I was frustrated with the narrator. She didn’t stand up for herself in her marriage. The visiting poet was a man who should have been shut down. Perhaps Bialosky is showing how tender artists can be manipulated. Our narrator is not a force of nature; she is docile.
As noted in a Kirkus review, “Bialosky’s premise here—that female artists are subjected to artistic, emotional, psychological, and physical ravages that have prevented their full blooming”. I am grateful that Bialosky has opened my eyes to the fact of male artists appropriating female artists works and claiming them as their own. The final few pages note different male authors who stand accused.
This is an interesting book. It’s almost “dreamy” in it’s telling. It’s very passive. It’s close to “stream of consciousness writing”. The narrator’s passivity drove me mad. I didn’t like the narrator. I didn’t like any of the characters. Yet, there’s a message there that is important.
August 4, 2022
"Something terrible has happened and I don't know what to do."
My interest was immediately piqued by this frantic blurb opening up the book. The story locale is New York City, the city that never sleeps...another point of interest for me. The female narrator is a woman married twenty years who is a poet about to publish a book. She is also a teacher at a boy's prep school. She is very concerned about how her book will be received/ reviewed by The New York Times, about her only child, a son who is away at college, and about the stagnation in her marriage. Oddly enough, we never even find out what her name is until the book's last pages...but even odder, I never even noticed!
She repeatedly finds a kind of refuge and solace visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the marble Greek and Roman gods on display. She is a connoisseur of Greek mythology. When she is at her most fragile and upset, she runs here like her life depends on it. Interspersed throughout the book are photos of these marble statues from the museum, and she frequently references stories from Greek mythology. Honestly, I wasn't interested in these passages, but I lightly skimmed these areas to focus on the real story at hand, which was quite engaging.
You see, there was another main character (whose name we also don't know until the end of the book) called "The Visiting Poet" who was a younger married man with children from Ohio. Also a poet, he was contracted to teach at the prep school for a year. He is a fan of her writing and they are intensely attracted to one another. This is a dance that plays out deliciously, slowly, throughout the book, providing the tension in the story.
I was drawn in immediately by the writing style, the way the female protagonist confided to the reader about the various things upsetting her. The ending was a brilliant twist of events, and I was overall impressed.
Thank you to the marketer at Counterpoint Press who put this unique book on my radar, and for providing an advance reader copy via Edelweiss.
My interest was immediately piqued by this frantic blurb opening up the book. The story locale is New York City, the city that never sleeps...another point of interest for me. The female narrator is a woman married twenty years who is a poet about to publish a book. She is also a teacher at a boy's prep school. She is very concerned about how her book will be received/ reviewed by The New York Times, about her only child, a son who is away at college, and about the stagnation in her marriage. Oddly enough, we never even find out what her name is until the book's last pages...but even odder, I never even noticed!
She repeatedly finds a kind of refuge and solace visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the marble Greek and Roman gods on display. She is a connoisseur of Greek mythology. When she is at her most fragile and upset, she runs here like her life depends on it. Interspersed throughout the book are photos of these marble statues from the museum, and she frequently references stories from Greek mythology. Honestly, I wasn't interested in these passages, but I lightly skimmed these areas to focus on the real story at hand, which was quite engaging.
You see, there was another main character (whose name we also don't know until the end of the book) called "The Visiting Poet" who was a younger married man with children from Ohio. Also a poet, he was contracted to teach at the prep school for a year. He is a fan of her writing and they are intensely attracted to one another. This is a dance that plays out deliciously, slowly, throughout the book, providing the tension in the story.
I was drawn in immediately by the writing style, the way the female protagonist confided to the reader about the various things upsetting her. The ending was a brilliant twist of events, and I was overall impressed.
Thank you to the marketer at Counterpoint Press who put this unique book on my radar, and for providing an advance reader copy via Edelweiss.
August 1, 2022
The unnamed English teacher’s life is falling apart, her son has left for college and her husband of twenty years is sleeping in the spare room. She’s slowly counting down the weeks until her book of poetry is released, she spends her free time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, looking at the exhibits in the Greek and Roman rooms.
How did it all go wrong, she fell in love with her doctor husband’s warm eyes and sincere smile? They made it through her miscarriages, yearning for a child, fertility treatments, and the traumatic birth of their son, and raised him to adulthood together.
I received a copy of The Deceptions by Jill Bialosky from Edelweiss and Catapult Publishing in exchange for an honest review. It’s a story about marriage, love, life, parenthood, work, relationships, betrayal, assault, anger, and plagiarism. All explained in a complicated narrative and using ancient mythology, it went completely over my head, and my brain struggled to process it all.
I really encourage you to read the book yourself and make up your own mind, I did understand/relate to the main characters struggles in becoming a mother and the pain of infertility, and three stars from me.
How did it all go wrong, she fell in love with her doctor husband’s warm eyes and sincere smile? They made it through her miscarriages, yearning for a child, fertility treatments, and the traumatic birth of their son, and raised him to adulthood together.
I received a copy of The Deceptions by Jill Bialosky from Edelweiss and Catapult Publishing in exchange for an honest review. It’s a story about marriage, love, life, parenthood, work, relationships, betrayal, assault, anger, and plagiarism. All explained in a complicated narrative and using ancient mythology, it went completely over my head, and my brain struggled to process it all.
I really encourage you to read the book yourself and make up your own mind, I did understand/relate to the main characters struggles in becoming a mother and the pain of infertility, and three stars from me.
September 19, 2022
Is it harder for a female writer/artist to gain attention than for a male? (I always say a female writes about domesticity and it's then dubbed "women's fiction," meaning men won't want to read it, and if a male does, it's Jonathan Franzen and considered brave genius. ) Jill Bialosky's The DECEPTIONS is about the price women artists/writers sometimes pay, about female desire (No, it doesn't go away when we hit midlife), marriage and myths (both modern myths and Greek/Roman ones) is still haunting me. Profound, important, and oh yeah, the ending!!!
October 21, 2022
i cannot explain it, but this book reopened a wound inside of me
----------
"Something terrible has happened and I don't know what to do."
this is a KILLER line
----------
"Something terrible has happened and I don't know what to do."
this is a KILLER line
October 3, 2022
2.5 stars rounded down
I really wanted to not finish this book. I found the first 200 pages boring. I was intrigued by the premise of weaving Greek mythology into the narrative of a woman who has tried to succeed despite herself and her life, but the overly poetic tone of writing threw me off. I only kept reading because of the premise— “something terrible has happened and I don’t know what to do”— so kudos to the publisher and the author for knowing how to hook a reader into a story that doesn’t pay off until the last 75-100 pages, I guess. The ending of the actual narration left a lot to be desired, it was very flat, but I appreciated that the ending letter/review wrapped it up (and that our unnamed narrator received a name).
I can’t recommend this book because of its plot, or its structure, or its basis on patriarchy and the suffering of white women that’s been done to death at this point. I suppose I could recommend it to readers who enjoyed Rooney— there’s a similar idea re: white privileged women who suffer at the hands of white privileged men— but it’s incredibly important to note the graphic and startlingly descriptive depiction of rape. It came out of nowhere (looking back, I guess the fact that the narrator is writing a book about the rape of Leda by Zeus as a swan is a foreshadowing device) and it completely threw me off.
If you like poetic prose, Greek mythology, and can get past the lack of quotation marks, you might enjoy this book. It just wasn’t my cup of tea.
I received an ARC of this book from Edelweiss (though it’s been published for about 2.5 weeks at the time of me finishing, lol) and all opinions are my own.
I really wanted to not finish this book. I found the first 200 pages boring. I was intrigued by the premise of weaving Greek mythology into the narrative of a woman who has tried to succeed despite herself and her life, but the overly poetic tone of writing threw me off. I only kept reading because of the premise— “something terrible has happened and I don’t know what to do”— so kudos to the publisher and the author for knowing how to hook a reader into a story that doesn’t pay off until the last 75-100 pages, I guess. The ending of the actual narration left a lot to be desired, it was very flat, but I appreciated that the ending letter/review wrapped it up (and that our unnamed narrator received a name).
I can’t recommend this book because of its plot, or its structure, or its basis on patriarchy and the suffering of white women that’s been done to death at this point. I suppose I could recommend it to readers who enjoyed Rooney— there’s a similar idea re: white privileged women who suffer at the hands of white privileged men— but it’s incredibly important to note the graphic and startlingly descriptive depiction of rape. It came out of nowhere (looking back, I guess the fact that the narrator is writing a book about the rape of Leda by Zeus as a swan is a foreshadowing device) and it completely threw me off.
If you like poetic prose, Greek mythology, and can get past the lack of quotation marks, you might enjoy this book. It just wasn’t my cup of tea.
I received an ARC of this book from Edelweiss (though it’s been published for about 2.5 weeks at the time of me finishing, lol) and all opinions are my own.
August 31, 2022
my first DNF…..yikes. stream of consciousness writing that was all over the place, no chapter separations, and i couldn’t be bothered by the mythology overload. the dialogue is intermixed with inner thoughts and it’s so hard to decipher what is and isn’t dialogue which made it feel like a chore to read
October 3, 2022
Abigail Frost, named only once in a letter that opens the novel, is a poet, also a longtime Literature teacher at a Manhattan all-boys high school, the mother of a son away now in his first year of college, and wife to a medical researcher, the marital relationship, once so close, is now distant, he often sleeps in their son's bedroom, she often must, at least in her own mind, parry her husband's belief that she is always in her own mind. She has also, for the past few years, regularly watched the swans in Central Park, their daily activities providing more fodder for the poetry collection she's written, soon to be published, that takes as its basis the myth of Leda and Zeus, she is also a regular visit to the Met museum, caught up in the Roman and Greek gods, the paintings, sculptures, and more, who speak to her like a chorus, all figuring into how she sees the world, her world and her life, the fraught relations between women and men, between love and lust, desire, consent and not. Written in first-person, the narrator is in severe distress, she is dealing silently with the aftermath of a friendship with the Visiting Poet, a man who taught for a year at the school where she teaches, their friendship one of some intensity, talking about poetry, about Leda and Zeus, the attention he pays to her, though she could not determine why she didn't trust him. Creativity, wifedom, motherhood, the constancy of the push-pull between the creative her and the her that must be and is other things to others, there is much in this novel, many themes, all moving at a rapid pace and utterly compelling.
September 6, 2022
I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
If I could give this six stars, I would.
"Something terrible has happened and I don't know what to do."
I don't remember the last time I highlighted so many passages in a book. I was intrigued from the first page, but not quite sure where the story was going for a large majority of the first half. The unnamed narrator is struggling in her personal life. Her marriage is strained, her son is not thriving at college, and her mother has dementia. Her professional life is filled with misogynistic coworkers and she is constantly editing her upcoming book, The Rape of the Swan, which she describes as "an exploration of motherhood, monogamy, and survival mirrored through the lens of two swans I observed for two years in the lake in Central Park." Her constant hard work and feelings of guilt for her ambition are juxtaposed against The Visiting Poet, whose professional road is paved for him (he has been given a space in his publisher's upcoming release schedule, despite not even having a book.) As the narrator seeks solace at museums, losing herself in the great stories of history and mythology, readers learn more about her life and "the terrible thing." The second half of the book winds up the tension, but this ending. I will just say that it was a rollercoaster and I LOVED it! A solid contender for my Best Book of 2022.
Come chat with me about books here, too:
Blog | Instagram
If I could give this six stars, I would.
"Something terrible has happened and I don't know what to do."
I don't remember the last time I highlighted so many passages in a book. I was intrigued from the first page, but not quite sure where the story was going for a large majority of the first half. The unnamed narrator is struggling in her personal life. Her marriage is strained, her son is not thriving at college, and her mother has dementia. Her professional life is filled with misogynistic coworkers and she is constantly editing her upcoming book, The Rape of the Swan, which she describes as "an exploration of motherhood, monogamy, and survival mirrored through the lens of two swans I observed for two years in the lake in Central Park." Her constant hard work and feelings of guilt for her ambition are juxtaposed against The Visiting Poet, whose professional road is paved for him (he has been given a space in his publisher's upcoming release schedule, despite not even having a book.) As the narrator seeks solace at museums, losing herself in the great stories of history and mythology, readers learn more about her life and "the terrible thing." The second half of the book winds up the tension, but this ending. I will just say that it was a rollercoaster and I LOVED it! A solid contender for my Best Book of 2022.
Come chat with me about books here, too:
Blog | Instagram
August 31, 2022
via my blog:https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒅𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒎𝒔 𝑰’𝒗𝒆 𝒅𝒆𝒇𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒆𝒅.
The impending doom of wrecking your own life, that is what I felt throughout the story. The narrator’s son (a gifted athlete to her husband’s delight) is off to college, she’s at ‘loose ends’ after eighteen years of tending to her only child. Her husband is loyal to his obsession, watching sports, and the fire in their marriage has been extinguished. She is a woman who lives on her rich imagination, feeding it life via visits to Metropolitan Museum of Art where she ponders the Greek and Roman art, sculptures and mythologies, finding connections to the modern world, especially her own complicated life. It is the one place she goes to restore herself. Her book of poetry is due for release soon, with it are the pending reviews she is ridden with anxiety over. Her husband doesn’t understand her, doesn’t seem to have desires for the richer life experiences that lure her. She has deferred so much to be with him, hasn’t she? It seems he takes it for granted. The glue that held them together, so many marriages together, is off living his own life now, of course she has no end of worries over her son too, especially when he is fickle about communication. Who are they now, when it’s just the two of them and what the hell does art, The Iliad and The Odyssey have to do with her existence? Twenty years of marriage, and it’s an empty bellied love, a wasteland, is there anything left that can be salvaged? Why is she so hungry for tragedy, elated by the ruin within myths? Why is her home, ‘a house of silence?’
Ruin and tragedy aren’t always fiction, and she connects the lessons, the imbalance of power, the struggle of the sexes, desires, yearning, the limitations, the punishment imparted by the gods upon us all. What torments us more than the evolution of our marriage and family? The elation of the early days and the trauma when “our true selves emerge”? The necessary vigilance when we have to tend to our young children and the gasping horror of setting them free, with the clawing fear something irredeemable or fatal will occur when we’re no longer standing guard. Speaking of true selves, what about our narrator? She tells us that, “something terrible has happened and I don’t know what to do.” What happened? She also tells us she no longer knows herself. She is teaching at a boys’ prep school when she becomes close to the visiting poet, flattered by his admiration of her. It appears to be a meeting of the minds, finally someone at the academy who understands the process of creation, whose work she is even, yes… she admits it, jealous of. He has a way of stripping her of her defenses, before long they form an intense friendship. Secret worlds are built, but as she informs us, her husband has his secrets too. We are witness to the castles in the air she builds, but who isn’t guilty of that? All our little mental escapades, the running narrative we have about our lives and our role in it? We are blinded by our wounds; we fall into traps of our own making sometimes. We let ourselves become vulnerable and often at the wrong time or with the wrong people.
The writing is very engaging, the exploration of entitlement, men, domination, their sexual drives, her lack of understanding the male mind, it’s revelatory. The emotions buried, the bargains made in partnerships and how our fantasies about the way things should be or could be disrupt, sometimes upend the reality of what is. The human need for approval is measured differently for a woman when she is setting out to create. Can she survive the thrust of severe judgement and betrayal? It’s a cruel thing when the narrative shifts and your own mythologies burn you. There is a creeping horror in this story, I know that sounds strange because it isn’t a nightmarish tale but it’s awful, knowing the life you have made is so easy to capsize. That maybe our sins aren’t always made with malicious intent, but because for a moment we forget ourselves and such things happen during times of change. Is she a victim? Are the things she does a willing sacrifice? There is so much to sift through, and it left me wondering, how much were boundaries society set compared to lines she drew for herself? Because make no mistake, there are always limits, based on the era we’re in and our upbringing that are hard to surmount. What an intelligent story of love, motherhood, creativity and ruin. Never have I been more gripped by Greek and Roman mythology. I think this is a book many will experience differently depending upon their age, and I love that.
Publication Date: September 6
Counterpoint
𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒅𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒎𝒔 𝑰’𝒗𝒆 𝒅𝒆𝒇𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒆𝒅.
The impending doom of wrecking your own life, that is what I felt throughout the story. The narrator’s son (a gifted athlete to her husband’s delight) is off to college, she’s at ‘loose ends’ after eighteen years of tending to her only child. Her husband is loyal to his obsession, watching sports, and the fire in their marriage has been extinguished. She is a woman who lives on her rich imagination, feeding it life via visits to Metropolitan Museum of Art where she ponders the Greek and Roman art, sculptures and mythologies, finding connections to the modern world, especially her own complicated life. It is the one place she goes to restore herself. Her book of poetry is due for release soon, with it are the pending reviews she is ridden with anxiety over. Her husband doesn’t understand her, doesn’t seem to have desires for the richer life experiences that lure her. She has deferred so much to be with him, hasn’t she? It seems he takes it for granted. The glue that held them together, so many marriages together, is off living his own life now, of course she has no end of worries over her son too, especially when he is fickle about communication. Who are they now, when it’s just the two of them and what the hell does art, The Iliad and The Odyssey have to do with her existence? Twenty years of marriage, and it’s an empty bellied love, a wasteland, is there anything left that can be salvaged? Why is she so hungry for tragedy, elated by the ruin within myths? Why is her home, ‘a house of silence?’
Ruin and tragedy aren’t always fiction, and she connects the lessons, the imbalance of power, the struggle of the sexes, desires, yearning, the limitations, the punishment imparted by the gods upon us all. What torments us more than the evolution of our marriage and family? The elation of the early days and the trauma when “our true selves emerge”? The necessary vigilance when we have to tend to our young children and the gasping horror of setting them free, with the clawing fear something irredeemable or fatal will occur when we’re no longer standing guard. Speaking of true selves, what about our narrator? She tells us that, “something terrible has happened and I don’t know what to do.” What happened? She also tells us she no longer knows herself. She is teaching at a boys’ prep school when she becomes close to the visiting poet, flattered by his admiration of her. It appears to be a meeting of the minds, finally someone at the academy who understands the process of creation, whose work she is even, yes… she admits it, jealous of. He has a way of stripping her of her defenses, before long they form an intense friendship. Secret worlds are built, but as she informs us, her husband has his secrets too. We are witness to the castles in the air she builds, but who isn’t guilty of that? All our little mental escapades, the running narrative we have about our lives and our role in it? We are blinded by our wounds; we fall into traps of our own making sometimes. We let ourselves become vulnerable and often at the wrong time or with the wrong people.
The writing is very engaging, the exploration of entitlement, men, domination, their sexual drives, her lack of understanding the male mind, it’s revelatory. The emotions buried, the bargains made in partnerships and how our fantasies about the way things should be or could be disrupt, sometimes upend the reality of what is. The human need for approval is measured differently for a woman when she is setting out to create. Can she survive the thrust of severe judgement and betrayal? It’s a cruel thing when the narrative shifts and your own mythologies burn you. There is a creeping horror in this story, I know that sounds strange because it isn’t a nightmarish tale but it’s awful, knowing the life you have made is so easy to capsize. That maybe our sins aren’t always made with malicious intent, but because for a moment we forget ourselves and such things happen during times of change. Is she a victim? Are the things she does a willing sacrifice? There is so much to sift through, and it left me wondering, how much were boundaries society set compared to lines she drew for herself? Because make no mistake, there are always limits, based on the era we’re in and our upbringing that are hard to surmount. What an intelligent story of love, motherhood, creativity and ruin. Never have I been more gripped by Greek and Roman mythology. I think this is a book many will experience differently depending upon their age, and I love that.
Publication Date: September 6
Counterpoint
August 23, 2023
Things that stood out to me in this book:
- Paint-by-numbers feminism that doesn't really add anything new to the conversation
- Meditations on the patriarchy handled with the subtlety of a sledge-hammer
All grown men in this book are repulsive. Without exception, they behave like infantile know-it-alls and condescend liberally to any female in their vicinity. The word "mansplain" is used at least 5 times. Every interaction the female narrator has with a man involves her feeling like she must listen to them talk without speaking herself, or smile at their jokes, or tolerate their thinly-veiled put-downs, etc. etc.
I'm not arguing with this experience—everything she depicts in the book has happened and continues to happen on a regular basis. But I thought it was a bit clumsy to have every single adult male character in the book behave like this. There are condescending, rude, chauvinistic men out there - sometimes it's obvious, sometimes they hide it well - but there are also a lot of very decent men, and the fact that every one of her male characters behaves like a villain from a Broadway show suggests to me that this author is not particularly interested in the subtleties of human nature.
I also wondered at the narrator's choices. The man she works with ( is so obviously a snake from the start and throughout the entirety of their interactions that I was seriously astonished that she was allowing him to get within a 4-foot radius of her. The book professes to hate the patriarchy, but the narrator Which seems a little contradictory to the feminist theme.
The book is not much better when it comes to the female characters. The narrator is constantly hinted at being quite attractive without trying at all. She gets a blow-out once and hates it. She considers getting her nails done to be a waste of money. She only owns perfume because her neighbor gave it to her as a present once. But every other female character in the book is depicted as superficial, appearance-obsessed, boy-crazy, and/or frivolous; e.g.:
- her neighbor, whose appearance is emphasized in every scene and who breaks up her marriage to waltz off with a hot yoga instructor
- the woman who sits next to her at the theater, who is depicted as an emotionally unstable and inconsiderate 'woman scorned' stereotype
- her younger colleague in the English dept at the school with the big boobs and tiny waist who is literally only mentioned once in the whole book (even though they work together) and it is when a man the narrator has been flirting with starts to flirt with her instead.
The book also seems to ignore a lot of the progress women have made in the workplace. For instance, I found this passage—
"On Fifth Avenue a stream of businessmen walk briskly by wearing rubbers to protect their shoes, briefcases in hand, determined to govern, to provide, and women stumbling in their heels in their shadow."
—kind of insulting, to be honest. I know a lot of women who work in very high-powered jobs—maybe they wear heels to work, maybe they don't—but it sure as hell isn't so that they can stumble around in men's shadows.
I also found it highly suspicious that the only characters (other than the narrator) who are depicted positively are those over whom the narrator has power because they are still children or barely out of childhood:
- her son, who apparently can do no wrong
- her neighbor's daughter, who her neighbor (of course) does not understand at all and who will single-handedly take down the patriarchy one day after being inspired by the narrator. At one point this character actually says "Why are men such fucks" and the narrator's response to this is "I know she is going to be exceptional". Is that all it takes to indicate someone's going to be exceptional?
- the boys in the classes she teaches at school (if she's such a feminist, by the way, why is she teaching at an all-boys school?)
- the boy-man who works at the membership table, who she kind of lusts over for some of the book and who rescues her when she swoons
Maybe all of this is intentional. Maybe the author intends for us to feel fairly unsympathetic towards a narrator who is so in her own head that all other characters in the story come across as about as well-rounded as stick figures. Who mentally spouts feminist sentiments from the 80s but who ultimately stays with her husband because he's protective and safe. If so, that's great, but somewhat undermined by the Hallmark-ish ending of righteous vindication that's achieved for her by feminists of the next generation. It strips away some of the potential irony.
It's also very interesting that Bialosky herself is a middle-aged poet who was embroiled in a plagiarism scandal a few years before this book was written. It made me raise my eyebrow a bit that her ink-and-paper twin is depicted as the victim throughout this entire book. I was also wondering how this book managed to be published with so many photographs at a time when printing is so expensive. Then I read that Bialosky is vice president and executive editor at WW Norton, and it all made sense.
- Paint-by-numbers feminism that doesn't really add anything new to the conversation
- Meditations on the patriarchy handled with the subtlety of a sledge-hammer
All grown men in this book are repulsive. Without exception, they behave like infantile know-it-alls and condescend liberally to any female in their vicinity. The word "mansplain" is used at least 5 times. Every interaction the female narrator has with a man involves her feeling like she must listen to them talk without speaking herself, or smile at their jokes, or tolerate their thinly-veiled put-downs, etc. etc.
I'm not arguing with this experience—everything she depicts in the book has happened and continues to happen on a regular basis. But I thought it was a bit clumsy to have every single adult male character in the book behave like this. There are condescending, rude, chauvinistic men out there - sometimes it's obvious, sometimes they hide it well - but there are also a lot of very decent men, and the fact that every one of her male characters behaves like a villain from a Broadway show suggests to me that this author is not particularly interested in the subtleties of human nature.
I also wondered at the narrator's choices. The man she works with ( is so obviously a snake from the start and throughout the entirety of their interactions that I was seriously astonished that she was allowing him to get within a 4-foot radius of her. The book professes to hate the patriarchy, but the narrator Which seems a little contradictory to the feminist theme.
The book is not much better when it comes to the female characters. The narrator is constantly hinted at being quite attractive without trying at all. She gets a blow-out once and hates it. She considers getting her nails done to be a waste of money. She only owns perfume because her neighbor gave it to her as a present once. But every other female character in the book is depicted as superficial, appearance-obsessed, boy-crazy, and/or frivolous; e.g.:
- her neighbor, whose appearance is emphasized in every scene and who breaks up her marriage to waltz off with a hot yoga instructor
- the woman who sits next to her at the theater, who is depicted as an emotionally unstable and inconsiderate 'woman scorned' stereotype
- her younger colleague in the English dept at the school with the big boobs and tiny waist who is literally only mentioned once in the whole book (even though they work together) and it is when a man the narrator has been flirting with starts to flirt with her instead.
The book also seems to ignore a lot of the progress women have made in the workplace. For instance, I found this passage—
"On Fifth Avenue a stream of businessmen walk briskly by wearing rubbers to protect their shoes, briefcases in hand, determined to govern, to provide, and women stumbling in their heels in their shadow."
—kind of insulting, to be honest. I know a lot of women who work in very high-powered jobs—maybe they wear heels to work, maybe they don't—but it sure as hell isn't so that they can stumble around in men's shadows.
I also found it highly suspicious that the only characters (other than the narrator) who are depicted positively are those over whom the narrator has power because they are still children or barely out of childhood:
- her son, who apparently can do no wrong
- her neighbor's daughter, who her neighbor (of course) does not understand at all and who will single-handedly take down the patriarchy one day after being inspired by the narrator. At one point this character actually says "Why are men such fucks" and the narrator's response to this is "I know she is going to be exceptional". Is that all it takes to indicate someone's going to be exceptional?
- the boys in the classes she teaches at school (if she's such a feminist, by the way, why is she teaching at an all-boys school?)
- the boy-man who works at the membership table, who she kind of lusts over for some of the book and who rescues her when she swoons
Maybe all of this is intentional. Maybe the author intends for us to feel fairly unsympathetic towards a narrator who is so in her own head that all other characters in the story come across as about as well-rounded as stick figures. Who mentally spouts feminist sentiments from the 80s but who ultimately stays with her husband because he's protective and safe. If so, that's great, but somewhat undermined by the Hallmark-ish ending of righteous vindication that's achieved for her by feminists of the next generation. It strips away some of the potential irony.
It's also very interesting that Bialosky herself is a middle-aged poet who was embroiled in a plagiarism scandal a few years before this book was written. It made me raise my eyebrow a bit that her ink-and-paper twin is depicted as the victim throughout this entire book. I was also wondering how this book managed to be published with so many photographs at a time when printing is so expensive. Then I read that Bialosky is vice president and executive editor at WW Norton, and it all made sense.
February 10, 2024
This book was like nothing I’ve read before. I loved the way she put all the visuals of the art that she was observing in the museum actually in the book, so as she was walking and looking at it in the story, so too could I. I thought that was so clever. The writing of this book was also so captivating; the first person present made me feel a bit suffocated at times (in the best way! Immersive!) because I was almost in her brain as she was struggling to reconcile her failing marriage. The pacing of this novel was perfect too. So glad I just randomly picked this up at a thrift store!
October 28, 2022
The narrators musings on art and the museum space were very interesting to read. I felt like it could have been a little shorter, though. Some parts dragged on.
March 5, 2023
3 stars is either too high or too low. This is either one of the best books I have ever read or one of the worst. I can’t think of another way to describe it.
August 7, 2022
I would give this book a 3.5/5 stars if it were an option. The writing is clearly strong and the author is talented. Some aspects of the book, I really enjoyed; the repetition of something bad happening, and the way what the bad thing was is revealed, worked really well for me. I appreciated the look into how parents can act and feel when their child is away for the first time. I also appreciated the nonchalance of the husband's internet affair. On the flip side, I struggled with how cis and hetero-centric the book is, especially when it comes to discussions of assault and roles in families. When queer people do come up, it's because the narrator mocks a fellow teacher's coming out, or when the narrator strangely seems to suggest someone's gender identity might change. This is also a book where, to me, I fall into feeling frustrated that the characters simply don't have actual conversations about things; the book could have started with the husband leaving, as he does at the end, and in some ways might have been more compelling and surprising for me. All of that said, I can imagine plenty of people will relate to these themes and the concerns of the book in a way that just doesn't work for me. I'm not the best reader for this book, but the author is certainly talented and I can imagine this one will be a real hit.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 3, 2023
The Deceptions is a modern retelling and expansion of the myth of Leda and the swan. I think that this novel, while impressive in its breath, was written by and made for a different generation of women than the one to which I belong. The main character is hyperaware of the constraints of the patriarchy, but instead of breaking it down, she’s constantly knocking at its ceiling or examining its walls, as if studying it will allow her to find a way to succumb in a way that doesn’t feel like subjection. At times, it was frustrating to see her circle around the same reasoning when it felt like what she needed to do reclaim her agency (I understand that this is far easier said than done, but it annoyed me nonetheless). Even in the final pages, when she held the key to take back her work in some ways, it felt like she chose not to use it.
I want to but hesitate to compare this book to The Latinist, which does a similar retelling but with the myth of Apollo and Daphne. Latinist is written by a younger man, unlike Deceptions, and I’m not blind to how my comparison rings true with the ultimate deception in Bialosky’s work. But, at the end of the day, I want to cheer for a main character that takes back who she is and what her work means, even if it means subverting the myth. All in all, a great book, maybe just not for me.
I want to but hesitate to compare this book to The Latinist, which does a similar retelling but with the myth of Apollo and Daphne. Latinist is written by a younger man, unlike Deceptions, and I’m not blind to how my comparison rings true with the ultimate deception in Bialosky’s work. But, at the end of the day, I want to cheer for a main character that takes back who she is and what her work means, even if it means subverting the myth. All in all, a great book, maybe just not for me.
April 12, 2023
This was really a good story about a high school English teacher who loved her subject and appreciated her students. She was also a poet and an author and was writing a story based on the myth of Leda and the swan which I have always found fascinating. The book was further enhanced by random photographs of items in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Very entertaining.
November 3, 2022
Some parts dragged on and the ending didn’t really do it for me, but overall, beautiful writing
December 12, 2022
Kind of sad and disturbing but overall worth it. If you know about Greek mythology I imagine it would be even better.
August 25, 2022
The main character shows us how we become overwhelmed by everyday responsibilities and slowly forget who we are. An impressively written story of a woman who has an awakening and is open to new possibilities in her life. She let societal restraints confine her and is set free.
Disclaimer: Thank you to NetGalley and Counterpoint for this ARC, I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Disclaimer: Thank you to NetGalley and Counterpoint for this ARC, I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
December 14, 2023
A book club required reading. It started off well. However the lack of dialogue punctuation and the sentence fragments became annoying. By the last fifth of the book I was fed up with the minute self-examination which didn’t seem to give the protagonist any insight into her motivations or reactions. The ending was somewhat unsatisfactory in that a critical action by another was out of character and the protagonist (apparently) did not act in a self-protective way. The references to items in the NY Art gallery were interesting and provided extra dimension.
July 30, 2022
An engrossing story of an ambitious woman, grappling with a lull in her 20-year marriage, the ache of being an empty-nester, the anticipation of a New York Times review of her latest book of poetry, and more.
Our protagonist tells us her story in a stream of consciousness fashion. We follow her as she works, thinks, and takes refuge in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We learn that something terrible has happened and slowly, we begin to understand what was that terrible thing…
The writing is beautiful and I was captivated by the unfolding of events, and also nervous, frustrated, and surprised. I will be thinking about it for a long time. I recommend The Deceptions to anyone looking for a smart, tense, emotional portrait of a woman beginning to unravel while trying to keep it all together.
Thank you very much to Catapult, Counterpoint Press, and Soft Skull Press for the opportunity to read an advance copy.
Our protagonist tells us her story in a stream of consciousness fashion. We follow her as she works, thinks, and takes refuge in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We learn that something terrible has happened and slowly, we begin to understand what was that terrible thing…
The writing is beautiful and I was captivated by the unfolding of events, and also nervous, frustrated, and surprised. I will be thinking about it for a long time. I recommend The Deceptions to anyone looking for a smart, tense, emotional portrait of a woman beginning to unravel while trying to keep it all together.
Thank you very much to Catapult, Counterpoint Press, and Soft Skull Press for the opportunity to read an advance copy.
October 10, 2022
Oh, my bleeding heart. I have never read anything by Jill Bialosky before and she is on my reading list now! An ordinary life turned upside down. The narrator is married, has a child in college and a child that did not survive birth, a teacher, a poet, a woman. A visiting poet comes to the school where she teaches. The arrogant bastard. She escapes to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and looks to the Greek Gods for answers. Bialosky depicts what Alice Cooper sang, "only women bleed". It is through the next generation, her neighbor's daughter, that she sees a way to break away from patriarchal constraints and finds her own way.
January 12, 2023
Books saved me...I understood that the characters in novels, extremes of emotion in poems, are more engaging and profound than life itself.
The Deceptions
Jill Bialosky
•
I will never be able to adequately describe this novel because it's so unique in subject, structure and style.
•
Set in NYC, The Deceptions is, at its core, a story about how the rules for women are different than they are for men. We all know that, but The Deceptions so exquisitely illustrates it on a number of levels.
•
Our main character is a poet, mother, wife and teacher, who is awaiting the reviews of her most recent book. She discloses on the second page of the book "something terrible has happened and I don't know what to do." The story's timeline then jumps back and forth from past to present and we begin to piece together what brought her to where she is now. So the story is an unveiling of sorts, done in such a beautifully literary manner.
•
Art plays such a huge role in this book. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a character and the beloved best friend to our protagonist. The chapters are interspersed with Abigail's trips to The Met, which is where she goes for solace, and there are photographs of the pieces of art she visits and summaries of their importance. It was such a unique way to weave art into life.
•
The Deceptions is true literary fiction. There is no punctuation, which I LOVE, but I know bothers some readers. It's a story of love, obsession, marriage, betrayal, motherly love, and plagiarism (seems out of place in this list but again, it's woven in so well), and how the cards are still very stacked against women no matter how big their talent.
•
And oh the ending! I had to go back and re-read the first page and then applaud the way Bialosky brought full circle the relationship the main character had forged with her young neighbor, the foundation of which was the love of books and reading.
•
I know I can't adequately describe this book and that is because in many ways it defies description - I've never read anything like it. 5 huge stars - I didn't want it to end.
The Deceptions
Jill Bialosky
•
I will never be able to adequately describe this novel because it's so unique in subject, structure and style.
•
Set in NYC, The Deceptions is, at its core, a story about how the rules for women are different than they are for men. We all know that, but The Deceptions so exquisitely illustrates it on a number of levels.
•
Our main character is a poet, mother, wife and teacher, who is awaiting the reviews of her most recent book. She discloses on the second page of the book "something terrible has happened and I don't know what to do." The story's timeline then jumps back and forth from past to present and we begin to piece together what brought her to where she is now. So the story is an unveiling of sorts, done in such a beautifully literary manner.
•
Art plays such a huge role in this book. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a character and the beloved best friend to our protagonist. The chapters are interspersed with Abigail's trips to The Met, which is where she goes for solace, and there are photographs of the pieces of art she visits and summaries of their importance. It was such a unique way to weave art into life.
•
The Deceptions is true literary fiction. There is no punctuation, which I LOVE, but I know bothers some readers. It's a story of love, obsession, marriage, betrayal, motherly love, and plagiarism (seems out of place in this list but again, it's woven in so well), and how the cards are still very stacked against women no matter how big their talent.
•
And oh the ending! I had to go back and re-read the first page and then applaud the way Bialosky brought full circle the relationship the main character had forged with her young neighbor, the foundation of which was the love of books and reading.
•
I know I can't adequately describe this book and that is because in many ways it defies description - I've never read anything like it. 5 huge stars - I didn't want it to end.
December 1, 2022
The Deceptions is a unique story of desire and betrayal, intermingled with art and myth. An unnamed narrator’s life is unraveling. Her only child has left home, and her twenty-year marriage is strained. Anticipation about her soon-to-be-released book of poetry looms. She repeatedly finds a kind of refuge and solace visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art among the marble Greek and Roman gods on display seeking answers to the mysteries of love, and desire; among the art and myths.
The story is a human drama that frequently references stories from Greek mythology & Interspersed throughout the book are photos of these marble statues from the museum. The stories often try to drive a point in the actual story but also sometimes distracting from the actual story. It explores themes like marriage, love, life, parenthood, work, relationships, betrayal, etc.; all using ancient mythology and art. There are many things in the woman’s life going wrong: from her son’s flailing studies to her marriage that’s falling apart. To cope, she turns to ancient art and its myths, finding solace in art than reality.
The writing is very engaging, the exploration of different themes adds layers to the book and the myths act as a metaphor for the actual events in the narrators' life, which were well narrated.
The dialogue being intermixed with the narrator’s thoughts made it hard to follow. The trips to the museum and the description often disrupt the flow of the story making it read like reads more like a museum guidebook than a drama.
Overall, The Deceptions is an uniquely written drama with a touch of art. If you love drama and Art/mythology, you will enjoy this book.
Many thanks to the publishers Catapult/Counterpoint/Soft Skull and Edelweiss for the ARC.
The story is a human drama that frequently references stories from Greek mythology & Interspersed throughout the book are photos of these marble statues from the museum. The stories often try to drive a point in the actual story but also sometimes distracting from the actual story. It explores themes like marriage, love, life, parenthood, work, relationships, betrayal, etc.; all using ancient mythology and art. There are many things in the woman’s life going wrong: from her son’s flailing studies to her marriage that’s falling apart. To cope, she turns to ancient art and its myths, finding solace in art than reality.
The writing is very engaging, the exploration of different themes adds layers to the book and the myths act as a metaphor for the actual events in the narrators' life, which were well narrated.
The dialogue being intermixed with the narrator’s thoughts made it hard to follow. The trips to the museum and the description often disrupt the flow of the story making it read like reads more like a museum guidebook than a drama.
Overall, The Deceptions is an uniquely written drama with a touch of art. If you love drama and Art/mythology, you will enjoy this book.
Many thanks to the publishers Catapult/Counterpoint/Soft Skull and Edelweiss for the ARC.
December 30, 2022
Jill Bialosky’s new novel is deceptive indeed. Does the male-dominated world of the ancient gods confirm her sense that men have always controlled everything? “The chorus intervenes: What if women no longer desire to satisfy the privileges of what the patriarch has built? They’ve been telling and writing the same stories for centuries. What if a new story begins with gentleness, negotiation, intuition, femininity, how would the dynamic shift?”
As transference figures, the Greek gods express her own feelings: they “deploy tricks to get what they want.” “When I compare my narrator’s woes to Heracles, I am half laughing, “and yet that’s how she’s feeling as she considers the male appropriation of women’s work across history. This theme manifests in the novel’s complex twists and turns of plot. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the narrator says, “I know I’ll find the answers if I don’t give up.” “Athena, looking sternly. You must rewrite the story, she says.”
Jill Bialosky writes, “I turn to poems when I want to push the limits of language and bring alive the unconscious. Prose is more fluid.” She cites Hope Mirrlee’s experimental Paris: A Poem, 1920, published before The Wasteland, 1922!
As transference figures, the Greek gods express her own feelings: they “deploy tricks to get what they want.” “When I compare my narrator’s woes to Heracles, I am half laughing, “and yet that’s how she’s feeling as she considers the male appropriation of women’s work across history. This theme manifests in the novel’s complex twists and turns of plot. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the narrator says, “I know I’ll find the answers if I don’t give up.” “Athena, looking sternly. You must rewrite the story, she says.”
Jill Bialosky writes, “I turn to poems when I want to push the limits of language and bring alive the unconscious. Prose is more fluid.” She cites Hope Mirrlee’s experimental Paris: A Poem, 1920, published before The Wasteland, 1922!
December 6, 2022
When the novel opens, the main character is a middle-aged woman who has just sent her only son off to college, and her marriage is struggling. She's feeling lost about what the next chapter is for her life. Along with her son leaving, she's trying to avoid thinking about an incident that happened to her with a visiting poet. She's a poet with an upcoming book and teaches at an all-boys prep school, and is worried about how her colleagues will see her book. This book is really about a woman who is figuring out how to find her own power at work, at home, and in life.
I felt very immersed in the book's opening moments and could relate to the feelings around letting her son go, questioning who she was now, and wondering what was next for her. The book weaves in different themes of ambition, power, mythology, and passion. The writing was beautiful. I loved how the author described New York and the metaphors and language she used throughout.
To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://www.momsdonthavetimetoreadboo...
I felt very immersed in the book's opening moments and could relate to the feelings around letting her son go, questioning who she was now, and wondering what was next for her. The book weaves in different themes of ambition, power, mythology, and passion. The writing was beautiful. I loved how the author described New York and the metaphors and language she used throughout.
To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://www.momsdonthavetimetoreadboo...
February 23, 2024
reading this, i felt as though i were a man perceiving and judging a woman’s narrative. the narrator has a deeply internalized desire to appeal to the male gaze, which is only reinforced by the ‘boy mom’ motif and her constant comparisons of herself to other women. everything is about how she is perceived — by her husband, by her chauvinist coworkers, by her affair partner, by strangers on the train, by the boy who works at the museum. bialosky attempts to critique this internalization — specifically in the realm of sexual assault — but it falls flat due to her writing’s entrenchment in normativity. the ending also fell flat as i was really hoping the narrator would take more intensive / immediate action to reclaim her strength and intellectual property, but it’s all neatly wrapped up with a passage about not being silenced that didn’t really give me a sense of character growth or self-liberation.
i did really enjoy the formatting of the novel and the incorporation of greco-roman art and mythology. that’s why i finished the book, as well as the often breathtaking writing (although many other times it fell into wattpad territory).
i did really enjoy the formatting of the novel and the incorporation of greco-roman art and mythology. that’s why i finished the book, as well as the often breathtaking writing (although many other times it fell into wattpad territory).
September 23, 2022
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Counterpoint for the e-book! The Deceptions is led by an unnamed unreliable narrator as she navigates life dealing with her strained marriage, a missing daughter, her son while he’s away at school and a book of poetry that she is working to have published. Making frequent trips to the museum as a school teacher, she begins to frequently go on her own time, searching for answers to the questions to solve her life’s problems in relation to Greek and Roman mythology and art. The way this story unravels was very engaging. While I’m not super familiar with Greek/Roman mythology, the author adds photos of the art pieces and thorough explanations of the Gods, making it an accessible read for anyone else unfamiliar. The writing style and symbolism are stunning and I loved following the main character’s story line. I definitely recommend for people into mythology and modern feminist literary fiction.
August 29, 2022
A tough call - this will probably be best appreciated by fans of literary fiction and those who know at least a small amount of Greek mythology, which looms large in the unnamed narrator's thoughts and life. She's a poet whose latest book is about to be published but her life is a mess-her child has left for college and her husband has emotionally left her as well. However, she's formed an attachment to a visiting poet at the school where they both teach. She goes to the Met, to see the Greek and Roman sculpture for solace. You won't know for a while what the terrible thing is but this is, to be fair, an overall melancholy read. It's also quite self conscious as it's pretty much all up in her head. While I found some of it pretentious, I also found myself turning the pages. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. An added benefit- I found myself looking up various Greek myths.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 83 reviews