It Is Wood, It Is Stone by Gabriella Burnham

Aside from its pretty cover It Is Wood, It Is Stone doesn’t have a lot to offer. It is one of those novels that is very much all style, no substance. Plot and character development are sacrificed in favour of gimmicky narrative devices and flashy metaphors. I finished this less than a week ago and yet I have retained almost nothing about its story or its characters. Not a great sign.

The novel is narrated by Linda, a bland American woman who follows her husband, a professor (?), to São Paulo after he’s given a yearlong teaching position there. Linda refers to Dennis as ‘you’, a gimmick that gets old fast (the kind of literary stunt that is more suited to a creative writing class). Anyhow, Linda isn’t sure if she still loves her bland husband but she nevertheless follows him because why not. In Brazil, Linda has to adjust to having a maid, Marta, an older woman she finds fascinating because of reasons. She then meets a woman in a bar and allegedly falls for her. More navel-gazing ensues with a few sprinkles of a half-hearted social commentary. The narrative doesn’t really provide much insight into issues of class, race, and sexuality. It thinks it does but really, the author is more intent on impressing their vibrant language on us (which often consists in clichéd imagery involving blood or the abject body and fake-deep realizations). The author doesn’t do much with her setting either. Much of the novel takes place indoors, which could have worked if our protagonist Linda had been an interesting narrator but her observations managed to be both dull and predictable. The author’s portrayal of marriage dynamics also failed to engage me. The author doesn’t maximise her story’s domestic setting, and rather than painting a convincing portrait of an increasingly disaffected married woman she presents us with a series of digressions (on the body, dreams, sex) that amount to nothing. The affair she has with this woman was rendered in such a vague manner that I never really bought into it. It seemed a plot-device more than anything.

There is nothing subversive or original about this novel. If you don’t mind affected and purply language, maybe you will find this more rewarding than I did.

my rating: ★★☆☆☆

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