Necessary Madness

by Jenn Crowell

Overview

From the critically acclaimed author of Etched On Me comes a poignant, moving story of resilience and second chances.

After nine short but blissful years of marriage, American expat Gloria Burgess's world shatters when her British artist husband dies of leukemia. Estranged from her mother, utterly alone in her adopted home of London, she must now struggle to raise her young son on her own -- and fight the temptation to sink into the self-absorption of grief that once drove her father to suicide.

As she puts on a retrospective of her late husband's work, Gloria finds solace in the form of an empathetic friendship with a charming widower, and agrees to let her mother cross the Atlantic to stay with her for their first visit in a decade. The reunion could drive the wedge between them deeper ... or offer Gloria a priceless opportunity for regaining equilibrium and wholeness. Will she seize the opportunity, or turn her back on a new beginning?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780997497502
Publisher:	Carnelian Press
Publication date:	12/01/2016
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.49(d)

About the Author

Jenn Crowell was seventeen when she wrote Necessary Madness. She attended Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland.

Interviews

Before the live bn.com chat, Jenn Crowell agreed to answer some of our questions:

Q: What books have had the greatest impact on you?

A: Almost every book I've read has impacted me on some level, but the first one which really affected me as a writer was Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. I was 14 years old when I read it, and it absolutely blew me away -- not only because of its disturbing subject matter, but also its sheer emotional power and lyricism. It opened me up to the fictional possibilities of language for the first time, and I still dig it out and reread it once a year; I never cease to be moved, or to be frightened by its dead-on depiction of what will happen to female autonomy in America if current trends continue.

Q: We've heard that you had never been to England until this past summer, well after Necessary Madness was complete. What tools did you use to come to know the culture so well at a distance?

A: Every guidebook to London I could get my hands on, and every BBC sitcom I could find on public television! My research was truly a labor of love.... To this day I have all the "Absolutely Fabulous" episodes burned into my memory, and the sight of a dictionary of British English on a bookstore shelf still makes me dizzy with excitement.

Q: Have you picked up British customs like afternoon tea?

A: While high tea is a deliciously pompous sugar high everyone on the planet should experience at least once (preferably at a swanky hotel with only a modest lunch beforehand!), I can't say I could go for it each afternoon. I do adore Indian food, though...which, you could ostensibly argue, is a British craving in itself.

Q: You deal a lot with painters and paintings in the novel. What artists have influenced you?

A: With the exceptions of Munch and Dali, I more or less align myself with contemporary women artists (Guerrilla Girls, et al). One in particular, Hannah Wilke, inspired the passages in the novel detailing the husband's quest to "paint for his life." She was a controversial feminist photographer in the 1970s, and a few years ago was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She arranged a series a photographs to be taken of her during the brutal stages of her illness, which were displayed after her death. They were raw, almost unbearable to look at, and yet imbued with incredible dignity -- I saw her photographs for the first time in August 1994, and I've been in haunted awe of them ever since.

Q: What books do you give as gifts?

A: Why, my own, of course! Just kidding. The last book I gave as a gift was the collected short stories of Flannery O'Connor, to my best friend Heather (who adores "Flannery O") for her birthday. She's not what I would normally gravitate toward, but with Heather's help I'm learning to appreciate her...not exactly the Tori Amos brand of Southern perversity, but a dark, complex read all the same.

Editorial Reviews

Whatever the qualities of this first novel-and they are notable, on both sides of the ledger-the qualities of its author are going to steal the spotlight in the months to come, in large part because of the publisher's promo campaign. Crowell was a 17-year-old high-school senior when she completed this work. Her writing teacher at Goucher College, novelist Madison Smartt Bell, read it during Crowell's freshman year and sent it to his agent, who sold it. Surprisingly, the novel is no story of adolescent passage. It is, rather, the thoughtful tale, filled with many small insights, of how a woman in her 30s weathers grief and learns to live with it. When British painter Bill Burgess dies of leukemia, his American wife, Gloria, is left alone in London with her young son. Gloria's first-person voice is engagingly worldly as she worries about her son, swings between grief and numbness and revisits her past-particularly her relationships with her mother, a cold perfectionist, and her father, a weak intellectual who committed suicide. These parents suffer from some slick, even stereotypical characterization. More troublesome is the scantiness of the plot, which is mechanically propelled by the question of whether Gloria will agree to a retrospective of her husband's work organized by a cloyingly sensitive friend. Crowell's prose is so clean that, at times, readers may be lulled by its cadences into mistaking rudimentary psychological insight for something edgier, deeper, finer. In fact, Crowell has fashioned an above-average domestic drama-nothing less, but nothing more. 150,000 first printing; $150,000 ad/promo; BOMC selection; film rights to Sony Entertainment; audio rights to Brilliance and Books on Tape; foreign rights sold in 10 countries. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Curiosity seekers, doubters, and naysayers will pick up this first novel to see whether the 18-year-old author can really write adult fiction; all but the most jaded will hang on till the end. Gloria Burgess, a recently widowed American-born Londoner, is haunted by memories and terrified that she'll lose the basic competence she needs to raise her son. She seeks answers in the eerie confluence between her history and that of the mother she despises. Both married Englishmen, and both found themselves young widows. Gloria's father spent his life licking the wounds left when his first fiance died in a car crash. Gloria bears a striking resemblance to her father's lost love, and their relationship is borderline incestuous. He commits suicide not long after Gloria moves to England. Meanwhile, Gloria helps Jascha organize a retrospective of her husband's work. There is a spark between Gloria and Jascha-perhaps because he lost his wife and daughter in a car crash five years previously. If all this sounds like a bit much, it is, but in spite of the Sister Carrie-ish trowel-loads of tragedy, Crowell never loses control of her material or tinctures it with sentiment. Crowell's shifting of mood and character as Gloria begins to accept her loss and reconcile with her mother reflects a skill and wisdom impressive in any young author, not just a 17 year old. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/96.]-Adam Mazmanian, "Library Journal"

Library Journal

Not only a first novel, but a first by a now-18-year-old writer—yet, surprisingly, this tale of a young woman's grief over the death of her artist husband tugs at the heartstrings with the best of them.

Gloria Burgess was an unhappy child, with a mother frustrated at having to sacrifice a music career to raise her and a father who liked to pretend that Gloria was the reincarnation of a childhood sweetheart he'd loved and lost. Happiness came easily as an adult, though, when Gloria met and fell in love with London-based artist Bill Burgess, married him and had a child. She is 30 before tragedy strikes, taking her happiness away for good, it seems. Bill is diagnosed with leukemia, and Gloria must stand by helplessly as the best man she has ever known sickens and dies. Left alone after the funeral, she somehow manages to parent her eight-year-old son, carry on at her teaching job, and find a reason to live. Help comes in the form of her mother, who's anxious to atone for her mistakes, and, more interestingly, from Jascha Kremsky, an artist acquaintance of Bill's who wants Gloria's permission to stage a retrospective of Bill's work. As Gloria and Jascha work together on the show, he's able to share with her his own experience of grieving. His support and friendship see Gloria through the darkest hours until she feels ready to take up her life again.

Crowell wrote this novel while finishing her senior year of high school. Its derivative tone, a minor defect from an author so young, subtracts very little from its fully-developed characters and maturity of content. A highly promising debut.

Kirkus Reviews

American Gloria Burgess loses her British husband to leukemia and finds herself and her young son alone in London. Sheila Hart displays unique insight into the pain Gloria experiences over her husband’s death and the tumultuous relationship she has with her mother. After hearing Hart capture Bill and Gloria’s relationship through a warm, caring courtship and marriage, the listener is driven to tears as she describes Bill’s illness and its effect on Gloria and their son. In addition, she amplifies Gloria’s character through her relationship with her father, a physicist, which Hart interprets as deeply intellectual, yet unusually dependent. By the end, Hart has discovered each character's spirit and seamlessly reveals their loving and difficult relationships. B.J.P. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine

OCT 97 - AudioFile