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A Novel
by Marissa Higgins
Book Reviewed by:From the author of A Good Happy Girl, a lesbian screwball comedy following two exes who turn to online dating after their dramatic split—only to end up seeing the same woman.
In Sweetener, recently separated wives, both named Rebecca, can't seem to disentangle their lives. Lonely and depressed, Rebecca is scraping by as a part-time cashier at an organic grocery store. Despite having less than ten dollars in her bank account, she lists herself as a sugar mama on a lesbian hookup app. Enter Charlotte, a charismatic artist who, unbeknownst to Rebecca, is also dating her wife.
Meanwhile, the other Rebecca, a newly sober doctoral student, has renewed her efforts to foster a child. The catch? Because the Rebeccas are still legally married, she needs her wife to attend parenting classes with her as part of the approval process.
Neither of them asks whether this means they're getting back together, but the idea alone sends Charlotte into a tailspin. As Charlotte navigates her desire for each Rebecca—or her desire for attention—her world becomes more and more Gumby-like and surreal. It doesn't help that she's been wearing a fake pregnancy belly to all of her dates, and only one of the Rebeccas knows it isn't real.
Sumptuous, sticky, and slightly absurd, Sweetener brings together three women fixated on the fantasy of motherhood, and trying to figure out what kind of mother, partner, or sugar mama they want to be.
Much of the tension in Sweetener is centered on the gradual reveal of trauma from the characters' pasts. The most intense of these reveals involve memories of the steady deterioration of the Rebeccas' marriage as grad student Rebecca's drinking escalated out of control. These scenes are very real and often very uncomfortable to read. The author's decision to approach their complicated relationship sideways—through each woman's interactions with Charlotte, and through flashbacks and gradually revealed details—is innovative. By the end of the novel, the reader may be hoping to see the Rebeccas reunite, but the actual ending is rather more complicated, unexpected, and strange than the resolution of a will-they-won't-they, and it will likely be polarizing with readers. While the story coalesces, there is something empty or not quite fully formed about Sweetener. The characters are compelling but I never felt like I completely understood them, and the ending throws this impenetrability into sharp relief...continued
Full Review
(824 words)
(Reviewed by Lisa Butts).
Anna Dorn, author of Perfume & Pain
Sweetener is bleak and twisted, horny and brutal, intimate and freaky. Few things are worthy of sharing a title with an Ariana Grande album, but this novel absolutely is. Ruth Madievsky, author of All-Night Pharmacy
Slick, filthy, and unhinged in her signature Higginsian way, Sweetener is the messy queer read whose taste lingers long after you've swallowed it whole.
In Sweetener, Charlotte and Olivia go to the Smithsonian to view an exhibit of dioramas created by forensic scientist Frances Glessner Lee to further the training and work of law enforcement in solving crimes involving a suspicious death. One piece they look at closely features a woman lying on the floor, surrounded by the ordinary debris of life—magazines, canned goods, a pie in the oven. The point of examining the tiny room, according to Charlotte, is not to determine what happened to the woman: "[T]here's no right answer...The dioramas are exercises in detail, both for the creator and the observer." This is particularly true for Charlotte, who is a claymation artist struggling with her career and purpose in life and drawing ...
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