Reviews of Glassworks by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith

Glassworks

by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith

Glassworks by  Olivia Wolfgang-Smith X
Glassworks by  Olivia Wolfgang-Smith
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     Not Yet Rated
  • Published:
    May 2023, 368 pages

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Book Summary

A gorgeously written and irresistibly intimate queer novel that follows one family across four generations to explore legacy and identity in all its forms.

In 1910, Agnes Carter makes the wrong choice in marriage. After years as an independent woman of fortune, influential with the board of a prominent university because of her financial donations, she is now subject to the whims of an abusive, spendthrift husband. But when Bohemian naturalist and glassblower Ignace Novak reignites Agnes's passion for science, Agnes begins to imagine a different life, and she sets her mind to getting it.

Agnes's desperate actions breed secrecy, and the resulting silence echoes into the future. Her son, Edward, wants to be a man of faith but struggles with the complexities of the mortal world while apprenticing at a stained-glass studio.

In 1986, Edward's child, Novak-just Novak-is an acrobatic window washer cleaning Manhattan high-rises, who gets caught up in the plight of Cecily, a small town girl remade as a gender-bending Broadway ingénue.

And in 2015, Cecily's daughter Flip-a burned-out stoner trapped in a bureaucratic job firing cremains into keepsake glass ornaments-resolves to break the cycle of inherited secrets, reaching back through the generations in search of a family legacy that feels true.

For readers of Mary Beth Keane, Min Jin Lee, and Rebecca Makkai, Glassworks is "an era-spanning, family and chosen-family following, marvel of a debut." (CJ Hauser, author of Family of Origin)

one

The Bohemian glass modeler went mad the summer of Agnes's marriage, and naturally at first society and the university board and

Agnes's husband assumed a connection.

They had been so often thrown together, since Ignace had come to Boston. Since Agnes had brought him to Boston. It was nearly as if she had captained the ship herself, according to gossip and political cartoonists. Really it was her money that had done it. Dollar-green paper hands crewing the vessel, packing Ignace Novak's valises, shuttering his studio in Prague—and installing him in Cambridge with shelves of glass and enamel and a foot-powered bellows to melt it and a shotgun-startled expression on his face, hat knocked back as if by a blow, hair frazzled with the grease of his sudden voyage.

Agnes had long since learned what money could do, for better and for worse. It could tangle people into hopeless snarls, or spin them into neat skeins according to her specifications. It took skill to wield such a tool...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
  1. Agnes's inherited wealth is due to her great-great-grandmother Elizabeth's partnership with "colonial she-merchant" Prudence Smith. Why do you think Elizabeth's and Prudence's stories are shared in this novel? What influence did their relationship have on Agnes?
  2. How does the idea of wealth and inheritance weave throughout the story?
  3. Why do you think the author chose to leave Agnes's husband nameless, calling him simply "her husband"?
  4. After Ignace is stung by a honeybee, Agnes sketches it, and Ignace later creates a glass model of it. The honeybee is described as "dangerous with a power far beyond its size, but only at the price of self-annihilation." Are any of the characters like a honeybee? What might the tiny glass model represent for this ...
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Reviews

Media Reviews

Good Housekeeping, Best Books of 2023 So Far
This captivating saga that feels as taut and fragile as the glass-blown ornaments at the center of it follows four generations of people who discover that one wrong choice can echo across the ages. It's a twisty tale of love, chosen family, hard choices and harder people that picks up speed as it goes, careening breathlessly toward the last page.

Booklist (starred review)
Olivia Wolfgang-Smith's first novel is a generation-spanning epic of family, inheritance, and identity…With richly drawn characters and deft storytelling, Glassworks is a beautifully crafted, memorable debut.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
This sophisticated debut from Wolfgang-Smith traces an evolving emotional legacy through four generations of a family while examining the basic question of 'how to love something without letting it have everything'…Wolfgang-Smith writes like a glass blower, patiently building and enhancing to create durable beauty. Simply put, this is a wonderful, wonderful book.

Publishers Weekly
Wolfgang-Smith contends with vocation, identity, and the meaning of family in her appealing debut...As the various threads tie together, the author makes clever use of her central metaphor, considering glass as sharp, fluid, changeable, and even surprising—much like the characters she depicts. This is a radiant exploration of a complex legacy.

Author Blurb Cara Blue Adams, author of You Never Get It Back
With warmth, vividness, and humor, Wolfgang-Smith examines what we inherit and what is lost to silence and shows us how people come into themselves alongside the fragile legacies they build. A dazzling new voice.

Author Blurb CJ Hauser, author of Family of Origin
A page turner, a work of gorgeous prose, a rollicking good story full of brilliant observations about the human experience and characters I sometimes forget I do not know in real life...If Elizabeth McCracken and David Mitchell had a love child, it might look a bit like this era-spanning, family and chosen-family following, marvel of a debut.

Author Blurb Jennine Capó Crucet, author of Make Your Home Among Strangers
Rendered in achingly gorgeous prose, Glassworks sweeps across generations, forging an engrossing portrait of a complex inheritance-a wise and inventive debut.

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