Review by Booklist Review
Unraveling in non-linear narratives, shifts, and perspectives, Plunkett's bracing debut novel, following her short-story collection, Prepare Her (2021), focuses on Portia and the effects of her bipolar disorder on her life and the lives of those around her. After dropping out of college, Portia spends time in a mental hospital. Once released, she meets and marries solemn Nathan. Now mother to a seven-year-old son, Portia is a musician in a band with longtime friend Carrie and drummer Theo. When Portia chooses to stop taking her medication and strikes up an emotional affair with divorced Theo, Nathan gives her little choice but to return to the same institution where she was admitted 13 years prior. Here Portia must confront the facts of her illness versus her motivations. Interspersed with Portia's ruminations and confrontations are glimpses into her manic episodes, notably the hallucinatory visits with a dead musician, as well as the story of lovelorn Theo, who is picking up the pieces of his own strewn life. Plunkett's vivid narrative is an intense, dizzying exploration into elusive realities and volatile truths.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Plunkett's perceptive debut novel, a young mother and musician struggles with bipolar disorder and her controlling husband. Portia Elby is 20 years old and a recent college dropout when she's first admitted to a psychiatric hospital. After she's discharged, and still wearing the hospital's plastic ID bracelets, she meets Nathan, a prosecutor 11 years her senior, who initially seems fascinated by the "young and troubled" woman. Their relationship progresses to marriage and pregnancy within a few years, and Portia, whose rock group Poor Alice has developed a "small following" in Vermont, tries to balance motherhood and marriage with the "sacred" intimacy of being in a band. Nathan grows increasingly bothered by Portia's need for affection and her tendency to daydream, and his frustration culminates when he finds out she's stopped taking her bipolar medication because she's worried it's stifling her creativity--and has started an affair with Theo, the band's drummer. Short, intense chapters reflect Portia's mental state and preoccupation with finding what she really wants out of life ("Sometimes I feel like I have to choose myself again every day. From scratch"), and the story's momentum dwindles and surges along with her moods. It adds up to an incisive portrait of mental health and the search for autonomy. Agent: Reiko Davis, DeFiore & Co. (Aug.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An intimate, fractured case study explores the relationships and inner perspective of Portia Elby, who has bipolar disorder. "A garish heap of self-loathing in her head" is one glimpse of how Portia characterizes herself in Plunkett's first novel, a nuanced portrait of one woman's years of mental and social struggle. Married to lawyer Nathan, with a beloved 7-year-old son, Julian, Portia currently spends her time playing guitar in a small rock band called Poor Alice and visiting her aging psychiatrist, Dr. Shay. Her nervous anxiety became acute at age 13, and by 15 she was in Dr. Shay's care, although this didn't prevent her from dropping out of college and spending time in a mental hospital, where she cut herself. Now, as a wife and mother, she's found stability through Dr. Shay's pills but at the price of "a fine, elusive layer of her spirit," so for the last six months she has quietly stopped taking them. She has also fallen in love with band member Theo, who seems to reciprocate her feelings. But matters come to a head when Nathan--often a chilly, manipulative, critical presence--discovers the pill accumulation and stages an intervention. Plunkett's presentation of Portia, her history, choices, feelings, and stranger notions, is far from linear. Instead, the novel unrolls scenes, moods, and events out of sequence, requiring some patience and unpacking, not least regarding various men in Portia's life. There are also manic episodes and delusions regarding long-dead musician Alby Porter, all this delivered in slices interleaved with the intervention and its aftermath. Simultaneously sensitive to Portia's perception and muddy in its chronology, the novel succeeds in accumulating a faceted psychological profile, but its indulgent length (including excursions into Theo's point of view), the absence of plot dynamism, and the limited appeal of the characters leave it partially stranded. Stronger on empathy than engagement. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
