A woman of means Book

Taylor's apprenticeship novel shows, in distilled form, all of the various themes and subjects he'll explore throughout his entire career. In that, it's interesting as a literary artifact. But as a evocation of a time, a place, a class, and the instability of all of those, as a story of growing up and seeing how fragile, frightened, and even petty your parents are, as a meditation on home and what it is and how it's made and how the myths of our own pasts help us to figure out what home is, and who we are--as all of that, this novel is just simply gorgeous.

Like all of Taylor's work, it's not for everybody. Understated, subtle, lacking in "drama" and page-turning-ness, it's a cerebral novel that can be read in a sitting, but that is better suited for savoring, for reflection, and for introspective conversation with yourself about how the novel does, and does not, help to explain your own self. Taylor's not a "cool" writer, and never was; but he is an incredibly human writer, who asks us to think through what constitutes our own humanity.