The Resurrection of Joan Ashby

July 3, 2017
This long-winded debut saga takes place over three decades in the life of a writer. By age 13, Joan Ashby, a writer to her core, has vowed never to allow marriage or offspring to get in the way of her authorial life. By her early 20s she has published two dark, prize-winning short story collections. Beautiful and poised, Joan travels the world on book tours and the literary world awaits with bated breath her first novel. But she falls for a brilliant, dashing young eye doctor, marries him, and her plans change. Their beloved son, Daniel, is Joan’s doppelganger and loves the written word from an early age, but she never lets on to him that she is a famous writer. As Daniel grows, Joan writes stories, which she reads to him, and also novels, which she keeps secret from both her son and her husband, believing she must keep this self separate from her self as mother and wife. Eventually, she has another son and decides not to publish the novel she has secretly completed, because she believes she must devote her time to keeping her troubled but brilliant second son from the brink of despair. In the meantime, Daniel discovers his mother is an author. Joan finally flees to Dharamsala for 200 pages of meditation, recovering her identity, forgiving her son, falling in love again, coming to terms with her marriage—and writing another novel. The novel, in addition to overextending itself—both in scope and actual page count—is frustrating, shallowly addressing its central theme of artistic pursuit versus family, and eventually turns into more of an inspirational primer on Buddhism than character study.

Starred review from June 15, 2017
A literary prodigy allows her husband to convince her to reverse their decision not to have children.Can you be a mother and also be an artist--or, by extension, pursue any serious ambition at all? This is the question taken up with urgency and all due complexity in lawyer and film producer Wolas' debut novel. The book opens with a hugely laudatory magazine profile of a fictional writer named Joan Ashby, revealing that at age 13 Ashby articulated nine rules for herself. No. 7 was "Do not entertain any offer of marriage," and No. 8 was "Never ever have children." Then, the article explains, after having taken the world by storm with two story collections, Ashby got married and became pregnant at 25--and that was the last she was heard from for nearly three decades. After revealing this much, and providing reprints of two of Ashby's famous stories, the article cuts off with this line: "Continued after the break." The "break" is a 500-plus-page narrative exploring Ashby's struggles during these decades. It's a tribute to Wolas' plot that most of it cannot be decently revealed. And heaven knows, a book this big needs its plot. Wolas provides not only the main story, but several more excerpts from Ashby's work. Maybe she goes a little too far with these digressions, but even in a scene where Ashby is teaching a writing class and the first lines of a dozen student stories are included--they're all great first lines! Like John Irving's The World According to Garp, this is a look at the life of a writer that will entertain many nonwriters. Like Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies, it's a sharp-eyed portrait of the artist as spouse and householder. From the start, one wonders how Wolas is possibly going to pay off the idea that her heroine is such a genius. Verdict: few could do better.

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Starred review from August 1, 2017
It's a myth deeply ingrained in society: motherhood is the goalpost every woman needs to aim for to feel truly fulfilled. Joan Ashby felt differently. She had no underlying faith in her ability to negotiate the enormity of the obligation, had no interest in the supposed majesty of the experience. So certain is Joan of her disinterest that she convinces her brilliant husband, Martin, to promise her they will never have kids. But life deals Joan a different set of cards. In short order, she has not one but two bouncing baby boys, effectively putting her brilliant writing career on ice. Early on, Joan predicts that the family she had never wanted would twist down into unknown depths, into a different kind of abyss, from which a roaring animal would race, up through dank tunnels, to tear into tender flesh. Boy, is she ever right! Deftly exploring themes of sibling rivalry and individualism and layering short stories within the larger narrative, this breathtaking, if overlong, novel will do for motherhood what Gone Girl (2012) did for marriage. A story requires two things: a great story to tell and the bravery to tell it, Joan observes. Wolas' debut expertly checks off both boxes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)