I have a general theory that a poet should always write at least one novel, and novelist should mostly avoid writing poetry. Some novelists I like have written some serviceable poetry like John Updike or Margaret Atwood or Marge Piercy. Some novelists have written excellent poetry like DH Lawrence and Thomas Hardy, but that’s much more rare.
But man, the poets who have written good to great novels is all over the place. This is just simply one of the premier examples. This is the book that should have gotten the love and adulation that Catcher in the Rye has always gotten. Esther Greenwood is having quite the summer. She’s thinking about the rest of her path through college, she’s thinking about trying to fall in love, and she’s thinking a lot about suicide. The last thoughts lands her in a mental health facility in which she is treated with what we would call electroshock therapy, and this means the scary kind from decades past. This is not a novel with a clear plot or set of events, but instead is the wondrous narration of a woman trying to figure out what if anything the world has to offer her. She has that kind of big brain intelligence that is looking for an outlet, and maybe writing is that outlet, or maybe writing is the problem. She’s also learning that her understanding of the world is not always the same as everyone else’s. But I would have to imagine more than a few people who have ever questioned the received wisdom of a certain kind of middle class American life has found voice in this novel.