Book Reviews, Sites, Romance, Fantasy, Fiction

Idra Novey explores art, welding, and womanhood in a stunning new novel.

On this week’s episode, Idra Novey joins us to discuss Take What You Need (Viking, March 14), a surefooted, fleet third novel from the author of Those Who Knewand Ways To Disappear. Set in the southern Alleghany Mountains, Take What You Need centers on two very different women who haven’t been active in one another’s lives for a number of years: Jean is a lifelong local, who comes into her own as an artist at an advanced age. Her former stepdaughter, Leah, left town early to travel the world; now in her 30s, she’s a successful translator, mother, and wife.

Here’s a bit from Kirkus’ starred review of Take What You Need: “Both characters who narrate this inspiring novel, spare yet packed with plot and ideas, are from a tiny fictional town in the southern Allegheny Mountains. Jean was married to Leah’s father until Leah was 10, when their flourishing bond was severed by divorce. In her 60s, living in the house she grew up in, Jean taught herself welding from YouTube videos and began making towers out of sheet metal, decorating them with oddments trapped in little vitrines and quotes like ‘I WANT TO BELIEVE IN SOLITUDE AND THE GLORY OF MY INNER HORSEFACE, DON’T YOU?’ Inspired by the work and writings of Louise Bourgeois, Jean had ‘no nerve in the morning if [she] skipped [her] nightly Louise,’ who ‘made art seem like something any obsessive loner who craved it could achieve.’ Leah, Jean’s one-time stepdaughter, left town long ago, moving to Peru after college, eventually returning to settle in New York with her husband, Gerardo, and son, Silvestre. As the book opens, she is on her way home for the first time in years, having gotten a call from a man who was living with Jean at the time of her death.…Transforming the odd and the homely into something beautiful is both the subject and the accomplishment of this book.”

Novey and host Megan Labrise discuss the novel’s shifting points of view and timelines; protagonist Jean’s distinctive mode of narration; artists Louise Bourgeois and Agnes Martin; Novey’s personal relationship to visual arts; depicting estrangement; whether Take What You Need qualifies as a fairy tale; Novey’s artistic concern for people who’ve been “written off”; whether art necessarily springs from an abundant consciousness; the Orion article Novey penned about Appalachian artist Norman Ed; and much more.

Then editors Laura Simeon, Laurie Muchnick, and Tom Beer share their top picks in books for the week.

Editors’ picks:

Harvest House by Cynthia Leitich Smith (Candlewick)

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Pantheon)

How Not To Kill Yourself: A Portrait of the Suicidal Mind by Clancy Martin (Pantheon)

Also mentioned on this episode:

Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith (Candlewick)

Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley (Henry Holt)

If I Go Missing by Brianna Jonnie (James Lorimer)

In Limbo: A Graphic Memoir by Deb JJ Lee (First Second)

Thanks to our sponsors:

The Tree You Come Home To by Jane Olmsted