"In Sunken Cathedral, Kate Walbert tells the stories of four women living in New York's Chelsea neighborhood, more or less now. Two, Marie and Simone, friends for decades, are widows in their seventies, yet robust, engaged, appetiteful, even ready to find love again. They were immigrants, survivors of World War II in Europe, and now are living alone in the houses where they raised their children. Elizabeth is Marie's tenant, the mother of a 13 year old boy, a woman convinced that others have some secret way of being, of contending with the world, some confidence and certainty she lacks. She is increasingly unmoored, baffled by her son, her husband, the elusive role she is meant to play. The Art Historian, who takes a painting class with Marie and Simone and works on a series of paintings of the city underwater, is a witness of sorts, a woman who watches the neighborhood, the weather (it is post-Sandy or some cataclysmic event like it). Shifting points of view and protagonists, interweaving long narrative footnotes, Walbert paints portraits of marriage, of friendship, of love in its many facets, and of a particular moment in New York, always limning the inner life, the place of deepest yearning and meaning and anxiety. In stunningly beautiful sentences, she has written a profoundly wise novel that has the subtle magnitude and artistry of chamber music"--
I won an ARC of this book via the GoodReads First Reads programme. This review in its entirety was originally posted at eclectictales.com: http://www.eclectictales.com/blog/2015/06/01/review-the-sunken-cathedral/
Unfortunately, I didn’t really feel for the story. The first few pages were disconcerting, but I thought it just took some getting used to, getting a feel of the storytelling and slipping into the lives of these characters. But about a third into the story, I wasn’t feeling for anything at all–the story, the characters, even the setting. Everything about this novel just felt so disconnected. The characters felt remote, between me and them, and even between each other.
There are a few moments of lovely prose here and there and fleeting moments that the characters experience. Unfortunately these touch-and-go moments aren’t really grounded in anything to keep the reader going (in this case, the characters, or even something sembling a plot). I was really expecting something more about this book based on the premise, something more introspective than the vagueness that I read. Maybe other readers will get more out of this novel, but it just didn’t work for me.
