Basically all I do in pandemic isolation is read books and sometimes write about them.
Astrid Sees All tells not just Phoebe’s story, but all about the clubs and drugs and adventure of Manhattan in the eighties. This is a great setting, but telling so many stories leads to the kind of overfull and meandering plot that gets novels labeled that backhanded “ambitious.” There’s just so much crammed in, including a storyline about missing girls in the village. I thought the constant references to the Missing posters were heavy-handed reminders of all the dangers awaiting young girls in Manhattan, and I was totally unprepared for the resolution of that plot. Actually, that sums up my feelings on most of the book. Whenever I thought something was leaning too heavy-handedly symbolic, there was a dramatic, surprising twist.
