A widow, Maslen, suffused with grief wonders what it all means, what might have been done differently, who indeed she is anymore (or ever was). She decides to look back on her life in hopes of finding a way forward. What follows is, perhaps surprisingly, primarily a history of her relationships with men — unrequited, requited but unsatisfactory, and just right (the last being the relationship she had with her husband, recently deceased). What is surprising (or at least it was to me) is how much this apparently intelligently, assertive, woman defines herself in relation to the men with whom she has sexual hopes or interactions. At one point she was pre-med in college. Later she did something significant in the field of ESL. We are told that she travels the world to exotic places recruiting for her school. Yet always her thoughts return to one or another of the relationships she’s had in her life. As though everything else were merely peripheral ephemera. It makes her less interesting than she might otherwise be. And it somehow discounts her grief.

Smythe has chosen a particular style here, flitting quickly between different periods of her character’s first person account of her life. Often she will stay with a moment for only a paragraph or two and then we are off to another (related?) moment. An epigraph citing Viktor Frankl’s analogy of life to a movie made of many thousands of still photos may have suggested this technique. But it overlooks the fact that although the movie is composed of thousands of still photos, we do not, as viewers, perceive it that way. And we don’t perceive or encounter our lives that way either. So unless this narrative technique is serving some higher narrative end, it tends to frustrate cohesion and character.

Nevertheless there are numerous insightful moments here, as well as some evidence that the central character is often blind to her own situation. And to the extent that the narrative, such as it is, circles again and again around notions of love, it retains interest. But whether it captures anything essential about grief or in some way reveals depths of Maslen’s character that might otherwise not have emerged in a more linear tale, is doubtful. On the whole, this is a first novel that shows plenty of promise and I shall look forward to future offerings from Smythe. ( )