What do you think?
Rate this book
Attachment
The author of the classic Bury Me Standing now gives us a riveting first novel that reaches from the Indian Ocean to London and New York, and into the most confounding precincts of the human heart.
Jean Hubbard is a syndicated health columnist, her British husband, Mark, a successful advertising executive, and after more than twenty years together they revel in a sabbatical on a remote tropical island. But when Jean discovers a salacious love letter addressed to Mark, she realizes that she has misdiagnosed some acute pathologies in her own life. The long idyll of their mutual ease is over—but a more vivid and compelling quest has just begun. Looking for answers, Jean goes undercover with a surreptitious e-mail correspondence that propels her on to alarming, and illuminating, adventures of her own in her adopted home of London and her native New York.
Assured, funny, tender, and provocative, Attachment is unflinching in its depiction of desire, of the responsibility that comes with age and family, and of the impulses that color and disrupt our lives even as they reveal, ever more clearly, the nature of love.
Jean Hubbard is a syndicated health columnist, her British husband, Mark, a successful advertising executive, and after more than twenty years together they revel in a sabbatical on a remote tropical island. But when Jean discovers a salacious love letter addressed to Mark, she realizes that she has misdiagnosed some acute pathologies in her own life. The long idyll of their mutual ease is over—but a more vivid and compelling quest has just begun. Looking for answers, Jean goes undercover with a surreptitious e-mail correspondence that propels her on to alarming, and illuminating, adventures of her own in her adopted home of London and her native New York.
Assured, funny, tender, and provocative, Attachment is unflinching in its depiction of desire, of the responsibility that comes with age and family, and of the impulses that color and disrupt our lives even as they reveal, ever more clearly, the nature of love.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
11 people are currently reading
328 people want to read
About the author
Isabel Fonseca
13Ìýbooks49ÌýfollowersFonseca studied on Columbia and Oxford.
Writes for many newspapers and magazines, The Independent, Vogue, The Nation, The Wall Street Journal.
For four years, she has been living with the Gypsies from Albany to Poland.
Currently lives in London with her husband Martin Amis and their two daughters.
Writes for many newspapers and magazines, The Independent, Vogue, The Nation, The Wall Street Journal.
For four years, she has been living with the Gypsies from Albany to Poland.
Currently lives in London with her husband Martin Amis and their two daughters.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 90 reviews
May 24, 2008
I think the main problem with this book is that the author relies heavily on summary, rather than description or dialogue, to tell the story. None of the characters seem fleshed out as a result. I had no opinion about whether the protagonist should stay with her husband Mark or try to reconnect with a previous suitor, because I didn't get a clear sense of who either guy was. I didn't even have a full picture of Jean, the protagonist. In the last quarter of the novel, her father becomes ill and fights for his life. Until that point in the story, the father is barely mentioned. Now the reader is suddenly supposed to care about his fate?
This novel reads like a long windup to a mystery, but when the truth comes out it's anticlimactic. Jean suspects Mark is cheating on her with an online flame named Giovanna. The big question in my mind as I read the book was, Who is Giovanna? Yet when Jean's husband finally admits to an infidelity, his confession is brief and lacks explanation.
This novel reads like a long windup to a mystery, but when the truth comes out it's anticlimactic. Jean suspects Mark is cheating on her with an online flame named Giovanna. The big question in my mind as I read the book was, Who is Giovanna? Yet when Jean's husband finally admits to an infidelity, his confession is brief and lacks explanation.
July 7, 2008
On a long holiday weekend, what do I decide to do? Read a depressing book of questionable merit. I didn't hate it, but I didn't really like it either. It's painfully overwritten. Often, unbearably claustrophobic. At times, embarrassingly silly. And yet. I could find myself relating to the central character, even if I didn't like her. I admired some of the language, when it managed to free itself from the unyielding blather of internal dialogue. Which, I suppose, allowed me to share the experience of the central character who was battered by several "Really Big, Real Life" issues after confessing that she essentially had avoided such things in the past. And, above all, I appreciated that it was something of a story about a woman's midlife crisis. Which I think is underestimated -- or at least overshadowed in all the expectations of men having them.
Everyone feels regret. This examined one woman's list of regrets -- and attempts to avoid more regrets -- in a singularly different sort of way. And for that, it deserves probably 2.5 stars.
Everyone feels regret. This examined one woman's list of regrets -- and attempts to avoid more regrets -- in a singularly different sort of way. And for that, it deserves probably 2.5 stars.
April 13, 2009
I tore thru the first part of this book, when Jean the American writer and Mark her British husband were a nice solid, likable couple enjoying their new home on a tropical island, telecommuting to her magazine job and his ad agency in London.
But then as everything gets complicated (illicit affairs, medical conditions, family issues resulting from her parents' long-ago divorce) instead of getting more interesting, it got harder for me to keep reading. Initially there were little holes in the plot that bothered me -- like when Jean finds a love letter intended for her husband and starts emailing the woman herself, well that hardly seems plausible. Then when he keeps traveling for business and ostensibly seeing the email girlfriend, somehow the subject of their torrid daily email correspondence never comes up? Then too it seemed weird that Mark and Jean had abandoned their daughter back home, all the while going on and on about how protective they are and how sheltered she is? And then all of a sudden there was just so much stuff going on that it got so I just couldn't be bothered. Like what, Jean had a brother who died when he was 15? But his name was Bill the same as her father's, who's in the hospital now with an aneurism, feh whatever. Two-thirds of the way through Jean's life is such a confusing shambles, I couldn't even see what she was thinking anymore. The ending was left ambiguous, which normally disappoints me but in this case I was just relieved that I was finally done with the book.
But then as everything gets complicated (illicit affairs, medical conditions, family issues resulting from her parents' long-ago divorce) instead of getting more interesting, it got harder for me to keep reading. Initially there were little holes in the plot that bothered me -- like when Jean finds a love letter intended for her husband and starts emailing the woman herself, well that hardly seems plausible. Then when he keeps traveling for business and ostensibly seeing the email girlfriend, somehow the subject of their torrid daily email correspondence never comes up? Then too it seemed weird that Mark and Jean had abandoned their daughter back home, all the while going on and on about how protective they are and how sheltered she is? And then all of a sudden there was just so much stuff going on that it got so I just couldn't be bothered. Like what, Jean had a brother who died when he was 15? But his name was Bill the same as her father's, who's in the hospital now with an aneurism, feh whatever. Two-thirds of the way through Jean's life is such a confusing shambles, I couldn't even see what she was thinking anymore. The ending was left ambiguous, which normally disappoints me but in this case I was just relieved that I was finally done with the book.
August 25, 2008
After a slow, frustrating beginning ("Hmm, my husband may be cheating on me . . . I should probably not be hasty and go to the gym first"), this became a very satisfying book, covering not just infidelity but the potential loss of a father, the estrangement of grown siblings, and the challenge of seeing your daughter build her own life and make her own mistakes.
My one criticism is that she didn't develop the husband Mark fully enough: there was nothing endearing about him, nothing to suggest why she was first or ever drawn to him, why she would assume others would be drawn to him besides his money, why she was so tolerant of his other faults besides their accumulated life together. In fact, the only identifying characteristics he possesses are his self-absorption and his alcoholism. From the other characters in the book, I know Fonseca is capable of portraying someone without making a caricature of them: why was she so reticent with the husband? Because people would want to look for details into what it's like to be married to Martin Amis?
(NOT A SPOILER) As I approached the end, I dreaded a cop-out by Fonseca, but rest assured, she doesn't cheat the reader. An impressive first novel. I do hope Fonseca continues to write fiction, or has she told her only story?
My one criticism is that she didn't develop the husband Mark fully enough: there was nothing endearing about him, nothing to suggest why she was first or ever drawn to him, why she would assume others would be drawn to him besides his money, why she was so tolerant of his other faults besides their accumulated life together. In fact, the only identifying characteristics he possesses are his self-absorption and his alcoholism. From the other characters in the book, I know Fonseca is capable of portraying someone without making a caricature of them: why was she so reticent with the husband? Because people would want to look for details into what it's like to be married to Martin Amis?
(NOT A SPOILER) As I approached the end, I dreaded a cop-out by Fonseca, but rest assured, she doesn't cheat the reader. An impressive first novel. I do hope Fonseca continues to write fiction, or has she told her only story?
September 15, 2016
I just got off a two-day binge read of Attachment by Isabel Fonseca, after finding it by chance in a used bookstore in Paris. I wish I had not read it so fast, but it is one of those books that grabs your heart, mind, and keeps you absolutely enthralled. Just when I thought, "OK, I can see where this is going," it would veer off into an absolutely unexpected new path that made my heart pump and kept me awake til 2am, both nights. The author's keen intelligence, dry humor, and stark, honest description of the jarring incomprehension that lives between long married people were startlingly realistic. Also appreciated is the sensual pleasure she seems to take in describing places, tastes, animals and things of all kinds--from a rusty, fat refrigerator on a bumpy island road, to an embarrassingly frumpy tote bag hidden (and found) under a chic bookstore table, from those heart-stopping, chance sightings of a green hummingbird, to the sorrow that fills you when you see a tired, overgrown, unloved garden--all these descriptions make the prose jump off the page and land square in your psyche like a friendly, but heavy cat that refuses to budge from your lap.
I loved this book and will probably read it again--something I virtually never do--because I suspect there is more to the plot, the insights of misapprehensions and confusion--than I realized the first time around. I came out of the reading feeling like it was about someone just like me--though living an entirely foreign life to mine. And I want to go back to try to figure how I got it all so terribly wrong... and what I might do next, to keep things together. Spoiler alert: the end is not conclusive....
I loved this book and will probably read it again--something I virtually never do--because I suspect there is more to the plot, the insights of misapprehensions and confusion--than I realized the first time around. I came out of the reading feeling like it was about someone just like me--though living an entirely foreign life to mine. And I want to go back to try to figure how I got it all so terribly wrong... and what I might do next, to keep things together. Spoiler alert: the end is not conclusive....
November 5, 2008
I found parts of this book good. I thought the beginning set up a good story. At times, however, I found the writing particularly confusing. I kept rereading sentences, oftentimes moving on still unsure of what the author was trying to convey. I also found many of the author's analogies inapt. Once I decided not to read it so carefully, I was able to get into the story, only to find the miscommunication between the characters and the resulting consequences to seem quite farfetched and unbelievable. Also, I thought the thread about saving the kestrals (birds) was not well integrated into the overall story. Not worth the time.
Read
March 7, 2024Intriguing and sweet book. And very well written. Surprise plot. Story about how of course you end up tricking, fooling, playing with yourself in matters of love, lust, secrets, and figuring out who you are and what you want
February 7, 2020
No lo termine.
February 16, 2014
I have this tendency, sometimes conscious and sometimes not, to gravitate towards books that deal with themes (ideas,problems)that I'm dealing with in my own life. In the fall, when my sister-in-law was undergoing treatment for alcoholism, I read book after book that touched on addiction issues. In January -- apparently the month in which the most marriage breakdowns take place -- I found out that two of my close friends were dealing with infidelity in their marriages. All of a sudden, it seemed like every book I picked up was about marital affairs and mid-life crisis.
This novel begins with a wife's discovery that her husband is conducting an overtly sexual (as opposed to emotional, at least as far as we know) affair with a younger woman. Puzzlingly, the middle-aged husband (Mark) and wife (Jean) in the story have decamped from their home in London to a remote island called Saint Jacques. There seems to be no real reason for this move other than, again, middle-aged restlessness. Out of the desire to not be "stuck," presumably, this couple has become unstuck -- geographically and emotionally. So, this is the strange thing: about a third of the way through the novel all of the characters and action shift back to London and, gradually, Mark's infidelity (and Jean's strange response to it) becomes a kind of red herring plot-wise. Rather quickly, all sorts of other issues are introduced (a father's illness, a daughter's romance, a strange sexual interlude, an old boyfriend, a ghost from the past) and the affair gets lost in the mix. I don't think that I am the only reader who has been confused about where the story is going. Jean becomes increasingly disoriented, but unfortunately, so does the reader!
I read an illuminating interview with Isabel Fonseca in which she says that ageing, not adultery, is the true subject of the novel. If considered that way, suddenly all of Jean's anxieties and the seemingly unconnected story-lines make more sense. We get to this mid-point in life, and suddenly all of the relationships and sureties in life seem to undergo changes outside of our control. Having said that, though, the novel meanders around way too much -- and when "we" (Jean, Mark and the reader) end up back on the island of Saint Jacques, it feels all too random and unresolved.
(Thank you, Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ reviewer, for alerting me to the Negative Capablities interview: )
This novel begins with a wife's discovery that her husband is conducting an overtly sexual (as opposed to emotional, at least as far as we know) affair with a younger woman. Puzzlingly, the middle-aged husband (Mark) and wife (Jean) in the story have decamped from their home in London to a remote island called Saint Jacques. There seems to be no real reason for this move other than, again, middle-aged restlessness. Out of the desire to not be "stuck," presumably, this couple has become unstuck -- geographically and emotionally. So, this is the strange thing: about a third of the way through the novel all of the characters and action shift back to London and, gradually, Mark's infidelity (and Jean's strange response to it) becomes a kind of red herring plot-wise. Rather quickly, all sorts of other issues are introduced (a father's illness, a daughter's romance, a strange sexual interlude, an old boyfriend, a ghost from the past) and the affair gets lost in the mix. I don't think that I am the only reader who has been confused about where the story is going. Jean becomes increasingly disoriented, but unfortunately, so does the reader!
I read an illuminating interview with Isabel Fonseca in which she says that ageing, not adultery, is the true subject of the novel. If considered that way, suddenly all of Jean's anxieties and the seemingly unconnected story-lines make more sense. We get to this mid-point in life, and suddenly all of the relationships and sureties in life seem to undergo changes outside of our control. Having said that, though, the novel meanders around way too much -- and when "we" (Jean, Mark and the reader) end up back on the island of Saint Jacques, it feels all too random and unresolved.
(Thank you, Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ reviewer, for alerting me to the Negative Capablities interview: )
October 16, 2008
Attachment connotes different things. How a bout a flying bird, carrying a blank document in its beak? Sort of like “a message in a bottle�? No? For that reason I almost didn’t pull the book off the shelf and take it home with me. That’s the New York publishing world for you, specifically Alfred A. Knopf, silly, misinformed, if not damn right stupid. I never read the synopsis on the inside jacket—more foolishness from ad-men (women). What I do do, is look at the author’s photograph on the back flap, and see if I can discern who they are, and what they may have to say about the way things are. (Pictures are worth a 1000 words � sometimes. Faces and foreheads anyway.)
So what is this book about, “Attachment,� a novel by Isabel Fonseca? The act of fastening two things together, like a gate to a post? There is that. A document, a written file or picture “attached� to e-mail? There is that, too. More of that than the other, but mostly, it’s about the bond between humans—the primal bond—and how that infiltrates all aspects of the human lifespan: A parent to a child; a child to a parent; a woman to her body; a man or a woman to a woman’s body; a person to his or her work; a person to a place. The primal bond is about safety and security and trust, and ultimately, about the two most basic of questions: Is it safe? And, Who am I? Or in the protagonist’s mind, “� am I truly alive, am I truly loved?� (Who are you? I am somebody! Who are you? I am some body.)
There is confusion here in this story, inconsistencies. If by design or an accident of the author’s unconscious? I don’t know. I’d have to interview her to get a better sense. Some of the story doesn’t add up. Can an attachment be partial? A gate, sort of fastened? An attached picture file misunderstood? The primal attachment insecure? I suppose so.
Is it safe? I don’t know. Who am I? I don’t know. Who are you? Can I trust you?
So what is this book about, “Attachment,� a novel by Isabel Fonseca? The act of fastening two things together, like a gate to a post? There is that. A document, a written file or picture “attached� to e-mail? There is that, too. More of that than the other, but mostly, it’s about the bond between humans—the primal bond—and how that infiltrates all aspects of the human lifespan: A parent to a child; a child to a parent; a woman to her body; a man or a woman to a woman’s body; a person to his or her work; a person to a place. The primal bond is about safety and security and trust, and ultimately, about the two most basic of questions: Is it safe? And, Who am I? Or in the protagonist’s mind, “� am I truly alive, am I truly loved?� (Who are you? I am somebody! Who are you? I am some body.)
There is confusion here in this story, inconsistencies. If by design or an accident of the author’s unconscious? I don’t know. I’d have to interview her to get a better sense. Some of the story doesn’t add up. Can an attachment be partial? A gate, sort of fastened? An attached picture file misunderstood? The primal attachment insecure? I suppose so.
Is it safe? I don’t know. Who am I? I don’t know. Who are you? Can I trust you?
Read
January 5, 2009Read the with Attachment author Isabel Fonseca:
NEGATIVE CAPABILITIES
It’s 10 a.m. in Primrose Hill, London. Author Isabel Fonseca sits in her kitchen, “tanking up on coffee.� An American by birth and a New Yorker at heart, she remains in disbelief that she’s lived in England for over 25 years. “It’s payment for my sins,� she says. “Or maybe I just forgot to leave.�
Her tone has a throwaway flash to it. She’s just joking, right? Fonseca corrects me immediately. “I’m not, you know.�
Why such resentment toward her adopted home? After all, England made her, so to speak, from a PPE (philosophy, politics and economics) degree at Oxford to her role as an assistant editor at the Times Literary Supplement to the celebrated publication of Bury Me Standing in 1995, a nonfiction study of the gypsies of Eastern Europe.
But of course it’s not so simple � and with her first book in 13 years, the novel Attachment, Fonseca is once again in the British spotlight. As a portrait of a failing marriage, online sex and adulterous misadventures, Attachment has already attracted controversy. Many regard it as less of a work of fiction and more like a confession from Fonseca that her relationship with the author Martin Amis is in complete decay.
NEGATIVE CAPABILITIES
It’s 10 a.m. in Primrose Hill, London. Author Isabel Fonseca sits in her kitchen, “tanking up on coffee.� An American by birth and a New Yorker at heart, she remains in disbelief that she’s lived in England for over 25 years. “It’s payment for my sins,� she says. “Or maybe I just forgot to leave.�
Her tone has a throwaway flash to it. She’s just joking, right? Fonseca corrects me immediately. “I’m not, you know.�
Why such resentment toward her adopted home? After all, England made her, so to speak, from a PPE (philosophy, politics and economics) degree at Oxford to her role as an assistant editor at the Times Literary Supplement to the celebrated publication of Bury Me Standing in 1995, a nonfiction study of the gypsies of Eastern Europe.
But of course it’s not so simple � and with her first book in 13 years, the novel Attachment, Fonseca is once again in the British spotlight. As a portrait of a failing marriage, online sex and adulterous misadventures, Attachment has already attracted controversy. Many regard it as less of a work of fiction and more like a confession from Fonseca that her relationship with the author Martin Amis is in complete decay.
July 21, 2010
Not recommended.
The 2 star average rating given for this book is a pretty accurate representation of the response of our book group who felt that the sexual content was rather too explicit and the story itself was a bit weak. In reward for our efforts to finish the book we weren't even sure whether the protagonist stayed with her husband or left him.
The central character is Jean, a forty-something journalist with a syndicated health column. Her husband of many years is an advertising excutive and together they decide to leave the rat race and move to the tropical island of St Jacques. This was one of the better parts of the book - the island was picturesque and vibrant, although only a handful of local characters appear.
When Jean picks up correspondence relating to Giovanna, Mark's 'bit-on-the-side', she starts to question their future together and all his actions are analysed in relation to this new discovery. However, rather than confront him with it, she impersonates him and corresponds with Giovana by e mail. Needless to say things get out of hand, ultimately threatening their future together.
I found Jean to be rather a sorry character, absorbed in herself and rather selfish. I was frustrated by her reasoning for not confronting Mark "because the moment had passed".
There are thousands of better books out there - I'd give this one a miss.
The 2 star average rating given for this book is a pretty accurate representation of the response of our book group who felt that the sexual content was rather too explicit and the story itself was a bit weak. In reward for our efforts to finish the book we weren't even sure whether the protagonist stayed with her husband or left him.
The central character is Jean, a forty-something journalist with a syndicated health column. Her husband of many years is an advertising excutive and together they decide to leave the rat race and move to the tropical island of St Jacques. This was one of the better parts of the book - the island was picturesque and vibrant, although only a handful of local characters appear.
When Jean picks up correspondence relating to Giovanna, Mark's 'bit-on-the-side', she starts to question their future together and all his actions are analysed in relation to this new discovery. However, rather than confront him with it, she impersonates him and corresponds with Giovana by e mail. Needless to say things get out of hand, ultimately threatening their future together.
I found Jean to be rather a sorry character, absorbed in herself and rather selfish. I was frustrated by her reasoning for not confronting Mark "because the moment had passed".
There are thousands of better books out there - I'd give this one a miss.
October 5, 2008
I was very drawn into this book, and am surprised so many other reviews are dismissive. Fonseca's voice for her main character reminds me in a strange way of Virginia Woolf, though the writing style is quite different. What they have in common is a sense of getting inside one very particular mind and really getting to know the way that person thinks... although this particular person is, interestingly enough, apparently unable to do so with the other people in her life -- she interprets everything wrongly in the immediate, and is constantly surprised by the reasons behind other people's choices. I found it a very honest meditation on the fluidity of experience, relationships, and self-knowledge, which is grounded in the very particular individual experience of the main character.
May 27, 2008
I started this book, was skimming by the fifth page ... the author jumped between narrating what was going on and stream of thought stating what the main character was thinking, using run-on sentences often ... I couldn't get into it, I didn't care about her or what was happening to her, nor did I care to read far enough to find out what she was going to do about it.
April 13, 2009
I couldn't get beyond the first 30 or so pages of this book. I found the heroine completely unsympathetic and the book just seemed depressing and not worth my time. I skimmed a bit before I gave up on it and it didn't seem like I'd be missing much by chucking it. This is the sort of cold, dreary book that put me off contemporary fiction for a while.
January 27, 2009
It the book weren't strangely funny, the psychological, sexual, and gynecological details would be icky. Still, this analysis of truthfulness (or lack of it) in love, sex, and marriage is acute. I really wanted to know what was going to happen, to see if what I supposed would turn out to be true.
December 8, 2009
some interesting points about marriage and ageing, the occasional stand-out sentence or metaphor, but ultimately i didn't believe in any of it - the main character, her reaction to events, her motivations. felt like a construct.
August 21, 2020
This writer has an exceptional talent for describing the details of her main character (Jean's) surroundings and thoughts. Her use of metaphor can be startling yet moving. There were so many memorable phrases that caused me to pause just to savour them. I wished, however, that she didn't try to include so many subplots as this resulted in lost threads and sudden insertion of new stories while others were dropped. By the last third of the book, I wanted it to be over and found myself confused over the whole Giovana story line. It was far fetched to begin with and became even more so. I want to like or at least have some empathy for the main character but that was hard to attain with this novel. Serious editing was sorely needed. She has some real talent but just tried to do too much in one novel.
February 16, 2019
I'm not sure what to think of this novel. It was as scattered as my thoughts about it: very white privileged, disjointed themes, so many names I struggled to remember who was who and what was their relationship to the main character. There were surprising twists, and that kept me reading to find out what happened next. But it was all very dreary and midlife crisis-y without a satisfactory resolution. I kept reading, because I wanted to see what new twists would come, not because I cared about the characters at all. That's disappointing.
October 12, 2018
I really had to slog through this. Had a hard time understanding the main character's motivation for how she handled the email. Not sure why I kept reading, except thought it might get better and liked the setting on the island.
May 15, 2023
Made it to page 70 but barely - while the focus of being a middle-aged woman who feels betrayed is potentially of interest, the setting of this story is just so steeped in privilege that all I could see was that even rich people have their family issues.
March 27, 2020
It was a good read.
August 7, 2020
Super pointless and I’m not even sure what I just read
October 5, 2020
Meh. It started out pretty interesting and relatable, but seems to lose momentum. Couldn't finish it.
December 4, 2022
No joy in being correct about the main character's delusions
January 22, 2025
Interesting and sad but a great beach read and thought provoking ending.
March 4, 2025
I got this at Union Station for $2 and shockingly didn't love it! It had some merits but the plot was hard to stay invested in.
May 21, 2023
I love this story. Fonseca offers fresh feelings and ideas about the dreadful parts of adult life: health scares, losing a parent, marriage trouble. Jean has a healthy conscience, and her bouts of moral reasoning made me feel more whole. She's also hilarious. Ironic but sincere, dark but not cynical. I don't understand the mixed and negative reviews here. Fonseca's writing is so natural and intricately observed -- I hope she will publish more fiction!
"...clenched silence-one indistinguishable from the many kinds of silence: concentration, meditation, fear, or indeed speechless ecstasy"
"...clenched silence-one indistinguishable from the many kinds of silence: concentration, meditation, fear, or indeed speechless ecstasy"
June 11, 2015
Poor Jean Hubbard. She’s got a lot on her psychic plate in Attachment. Forty-six years old and facing situations typical for the first blush of middle age, she’s at the beginning of the age of loss: your youth, your parents, your offspring as dependent children, your assumption of your own hearty health, your old way of being married. Finally it dawns that being a grown-up and being mature are two separate matters entirely, the latter not flowing naturally from the other in any regard. Indeed, maturity requires giving up life as a free ride--choices you’ve made come home to roost as consequences; you’re responsible for your own happiness; the affection you don’t reciprocate goes away; love is effortful and forgiveness necessary. How Jean Hubbard negotiates her new stage of life, and because of whom, comprise this skillfully written novel.
The greatest pleasure to me about Attachment was Isabel Fonseca’s writing. Having won acclaim for a previous book of non-fiction, Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey, with this book she tried her hand at a novel. Particularly for a first, it’s a splendid read, the characterizations vivid and succinct, the bones of the plot covered with development sufficient to credibly sustain the story’s forward velocity, various settings used to subtly symbolize the new arrival points of Jean’s odyssey. Fonseca’s style is both efficient and thorough, her descriptions cueing the reader in just a few deft strokes. For example, “And she invested in Joe, the hoop-earringed nurse with a standout candor: a real find in this world of technical talk, shift change, and buck-passing specialization.� Such writing alone was enough to attach me to Attachment.
By the book’s end the reader knows Jean has finally correctly assessed her developmental circumstances, and there are clues given as to what she might do about them. Thankfully, it’s left to the reader’s own imagination, however, to bring Jean’s story to full conclusion. Fonseca rightly doesn’t spoon-feed an ending. I always respect an author who respects my intelligence.
The greatest pleasure to me about Attachment was Isabel Fonseca’s writing. Having won acclaim for a previous book of non-fiction, Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey, with this book she tried her hand at a novel. Particularly for a first, it’s a splendid read, the characterizations vivid and succinct, the bones of the plot covered with development sufficient to credibly sustain the story’s forward velocity, various settings used to subtly symbolize the new arrival points of Jean’s odyssey. Fonseca’s style is both efficient and thorough, her descriptions cueing the reader in just a few deft strokes. For example, “And she invested in Joe, the hoop-earringed nurse with a standout candor: a real find in this world of technical talk, shift change, and buck-passing specialization.� Such writing alone was enough to attach me to Attachment.
By the book’s end the reader knows Jean has finally correctly assessed her developmental circumstances, and there are clues given as to what she might do about them. Thankfully, it’s left to the reader’s own imagination, however, to bring Jean’s story to full conclusion. Fonseca rightly doesn’t spoon-feed an ending. I always respect an author who respects my intelligence.
August 31, 2016
"Liked" is not the right word. This book was very unsettling, strange and upsetting. I wanted to know what happened in this strangely dysfunctional marriage, even though it was so odd that I needed to skim to find out. Skimming left me too confused, so I began to read again. The essence is that even in a marriage, we misconstrue and keep secrets and act on our own worst interest because we are acting on the narrative we've created about our partner. I think the blurb on the cover doesn't get the point of the book at all. So, I was struck by how different this book is than anything I typically read, and if the author wanted to shock, she did. This is the author of Bury Me Standing, a book about the gypsies in Europe. I wouldn't recommend Attachment, but if you like books that constantly pull the rug out from under you, this may satisfy.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 90 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.