Joanne J

John Lanchester's densely written novel begins with "Every successful marriage has its own private language, a sentence reminiscent of Tolstoy, which is followed by an allusion to Guy de Maupassant (The Necklace), Mary McCarthy's The Group, and Chekhov's Three Sisters. At one point, the structural allusion resembled Kate Atkinson's in Life after Life and Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Alas, I didn't put all these vignettes together before Lanchester's brilliant reveal. WOW! I loved this book!

One's Company, Ashley Hutson's debut novel reminded me of the romantic movie Somewhere in Time and Ottessa Moshfegh's novel Eileen albeit for disparate reasons. True, One's Company is not a romance, but Hutson's careful adherence to detail in creating her world resembles the verisimilitude -- in fashion and speech--sought by Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve) in order to successfully travel through time. Hutson's delineation of the characters and settings in One's Company resembles Moshfegh's depiction of the main characters in Eileen, but Hutson's complex characterizations are strictly her own, physically and emotionally built upon background and incidents in the narrative.

Readers who appreciate dark humor, dense narrative, and farcical situations will love this novel.