I ended up feeling let down by this book. Even though it was short and fairly easy to get through, at times I found it confusing, especially with the shifting perspectives. The story felt a bit odd, and the second half was not nearly as strong as the beginning.

Trenton makes is a confusing story. As the reader I did not find myself totally following the story as there were many perspectives. Finding out that Abe is really the same woman we were originally introduced to was a shocking revelation. I did not entirely see it coming and it took me by surprise. I think that the era in which this takes place it is also pretty interesting because it was easier to take someone's identity. I was confused for quite some time and I am still unclear on how these motives were to come to fruition. Overall this was an interesting read and painted a very bleak and dark picture of a world occupied by men and how women were to function behind them. I think this was an interesting read.

I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher and the author for my advanced copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

I am giving this 2.5 stars because aside from the writing style, which I found very pleasant and interesting, I didn't get the book. I didn't get the story. What was the point of it? What did the author try to say?

We meet Art Kunstler. His life is tough. It's post-WW2 and jobs are rough, money is tight, and morale is low. Art lives with a secret, a big, big secret! Throughout the entire book, I couldn't figure out how Art really felt about that. This made it so difficult to relate to our main character. We get to know a bit about his backstory but most of the novel focuses on the present day. Well, at least most of the first half of the book. For the second half, there is a sudden shift to another main character, Art's son. Why? I have no idea. First, I thought it would give the story depth, but really, it just left me utterly confused. Honestly, I have no idea how Art's saga ends - and this is not a good open ending, it just left me unsatisfied.

All in all, this book just didn't do it for me. The premise was super intriguing but the execution was lacking. I would like to be more explicit about why but anything I could say would be a spoiler and then there would be nothing left in the book.

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

If I had known that author was a graduate from a writing program, I would not have requested to read this novel, because whenever I have read such novels in the past, they've universally been sterile, poorly-written, and boring with thoroughly uninteresting characters. The authors of such novels seem to be so tightly focused on the writing that they completely forget that the story is where it's at, not the technical writing of it.

I'd much rather have an indifferently-written, or even poorly-written, novel that tells a really good story than one which is exquisitely written, yet tells a less than mediocre tale. The blurb did its job and made it sound interesting: "...a woman who carves out her share of the American Dream by living as a man." but whereas the blurb was all sound and fury, the actual novel signified nothing. The main character was thoroughly unlikeable and had no saving graces.

How you can make such a story boring is a mystery to me, but this author managed it. I gave up at forty percent in because my mind was going numb. The blurb describes this as "A vivid, brutal, razor-sharp debut..." but none of that is true. Instead, what we get is clinical (have you ever tried to read a doctor's handwriting?!) and unappealing tale which meanders and mumbles and which offered me nothing whatsoever. A lot of it was confusing. To continue the clinical metaphor, I always felt like I was in an operating room after the operation was over. The most interesting part of the process was already long gone, leaving nothing but a messy OR in dire need of sterilization.

It's set in 1946 in Trenton, New Jersey, and Mrs Kunstler kills her husband and assumes his identity. I'd forgotten about this by the time I got around to reading this novel, so it was like coming into it completely blind, and I have to tell you there was nothing in that first forty percent to really clarify exactly what the hell was going on. If I'd wanted a detective story, with me as the detective, I'd have written one myself!

I actually had to go back and read the blurb to figure out why I'd even requested this novel to review in the first place! That's how bad it was. I know authors don't get to write their own blurbs unless they self-publish, but when the story is told in the blurb, you gain noting by being all coy about it in the novel itself. I know that's ass-backwards, but it's the way the professional publishing business actually is: you write your story and then the publisher turns it into something else in the blurb and you get a dissatisfied readership as a result.

If "stylized prose" means tedious, then yeah, the blurb got it right. If by "gripping narrative" the blurb-writer meant that you grip the novel ever tighter out of sheer frustration and annoyance, then yeah, they got that right, too. But no, it was not remotely provocative. No, it was nothing like incisive. The hyperbole of the burb was laughable, but there was nothing funny about a novel that promises so much and then utterly fails to deliver even a semblance of a decent story. I cannot recommend this one at all when the same patient in better hands would have survived the surgery handsomely.

Trigger warnings: [racist and offensive language, violence, alcoholism, domestic abuse, non-consenual sex/ rape, mentions of sexual abuse, and murder (hide spoiler)]

This book is challenging to give a star rating to as I really liked the first half and then ended up not particularly enjoying the second half, which at it's best was only okay. Based on that, I'm giving this book 2.5 stars, which is in the middle of okay and like, which seems about as close to accurate as a star rating system can for this type of book.

This is an odd, but engaging book. I found myself absorbed in the book and needing to find out what happens next. But there are two significant flaws: the change in Kunstler is not well developed (and with this being a short book, there was definitely opportunity to do so instead of jumping forward so many years) and the ending is unclear and vague. Anytime the author writes in full italics, the writing is more challenging and much less clear. It is incredibly frustrating to spend so much time with a book and its characters only to have no resolution in the end.

The writing style is different than typical books and may not be enjoyed by all readers. It took me a bit to adjust to the style, but once I did, it wasn't a problem. The writing style is somewhat vague and the narration is not exactly from the point of view of the characters, but it is. This is to say that there isn't as much internal narration as one typically finds with 3rd person narration. In some ways this worked because Kunstler was a quiet and withdrawn character, but it was frustrating when the perspective changed to two other characters who were not as withdrawn.

It is challenging to talk about this book without spoiling the book. The Goodreads description accurately lays out the plot, almost in too much detail. The first half of the book is well-done and I liked Kunstler, odd though he is. However, in the second half of the book, when the timeline jumps forward significantly, the book is less coherent and less able to explain what is going on. In fact, the description gives more insight into why things are as they are than the book does itself. I think it was a mistake to jump so much time unless the author was going to find another way to show the building cracks which ultimately lead to the end of the book. Kunstler in the second half of the book is so drastically changed, it is hard to relate to him and his character is quite unlikeable. I enjoy when characters significantly develop, even when that development leads to become more grey and/ or unlikeable. But that change needs to be developed and demonstrated. Instead, the perspective changes to mostly focus on the son, who has no idea his father was ever a different person and thus cannot expand on why things are the way they are. This was a significant flaw for me and cost the book a star.

I mentioned that the vague ending was a problem and frustrating, which it was, but if the prose had simply been written in a clearer, more concise manner, it might have been less frustrating to leave so much unresolved. What I gathered from the ending was the takeaway on strength, which I won't spoil for readers, but that takeway 1) did not sit well with me and in many ways raises significant problems and 2) did not seem to fit within the context of the book. For those interested, (view spoiler) Since this is a book about a strong woman who defends herself when her husband beats her, accidentally killing him, and who then goes on to assume his identity so she can find a sort of freedom, which is not how the Goodreads description depicts the plot, (view spoiler) The entire half of the second book works to negate the strength and freedom Kunstler once found in assuming the identity of a man and this negation of her strength and resolve is horribly disappointing. It is also disturbing, but it is challenging to articulate the heart of the issue with this, especially without spoilers, but it ultimately, in some ways, only adds to sexist and transphobic views, particularly because his character change was not well-developed.

The more I sit and reflect on this book, the more I take issue with its portal of a gay, trans character who rises in strength to overcome horrible abuse only to fall far from that strength. I won't take a stand on whether I recommend it. If based on the description and reviews, you are interested in this book, then by all means, read it. If you are hesitate based on my review, reach out and I will do my best to point you in the direction best for you.

I received this eARC from the pusblisher Doubleday Books through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

TRENTON MAKES (2018)
By Tadzio Koelb
Knopf, 224 pages
★★★★

If John Steinbeck had been born later, he might have tackled something akin to Trenton Makes. There are decided Steinbeck elements to Tadzio Koelb's debut novel, including the use of intercalary chapters, the elegiac sweep of his prose, and nods to the forgotten man. Except for Koelb, the forgotten "man" is a woman who assumes a male identity.

Trenton Makes unfolds in two acts, the first set between 1946 and 1952, the second occurring in 1971. This means the plot is bookended by the end of World War Two and surging disenchantment with the Vietnam War. Call it a metaphorical shift from triumphalism to the beginning of the end of the American Century, a major component of which was loss of America's near monopoly of global capitalism and its slide toward an uncertain economic future. Officially, stagflation and recession began in 1973, but Rust Belt cities such as Trenton, New Jersey were tragically precocious in their demise.
Koelb takes this a step further by casting doubt as to whether the American Century was real in the first place. If it was an illusion, perhaps so too is the American Dream. After all, that concept was always problematic for people of color, recent immigrants, those living near the margins, and women—all of whom had (in Langston Hughes' words) dreams deferred.

Questions of identity lie at the heart of Trenton Makes. Its protagonist is Abe Kunstler—both of them. The first Abe is a psychologically scarred World War Two veteran who wants his slice of the American Dream. Part of that Dream is economic—a good job—but a major part of it is rooted in prevailing social norms of male privilege. Abe probably would have been a bland, but decent guy, if only drink, financial frustration, lust, and social scripts hadn't gotten in the way. He befriends and ultimately seeks to possess a taxi dancer named Inez, but allows his demons to overwhelm his better angels. During one of his frequent drunken, abusive, and libidinal moments, Inez fights back, murders Abe, butchers his body, and feeds it to the basement furnace. The parallel between Abe's burning and Trenton's industrial smoke is both poignant and a harbinger. Inez's own violence comes from pent up rage for which Abe is a sacrifice for past wrongs:

… until the war she was never allowed to do any but the most meaningless work and she was condemned to poverty, which seemed to her as much a feature of her women's form as any physical part. The only ladder meeting the wall of constraint was a man, so she traded the little she had, which was the still body beneath the one that bucked and jerked, and in return received as much or as little as these were able or willing to offer her.


Koelb uses this singular horror to infer the collective horrors of postwar women whose dreams were replaced by proscribed subservience. Departed Abe, of course, never really knew Inez, or other women like her. The taxi driver he tried to lord over had honed her strength on wartime assembly lines, preparation for future work as a factory wirepuller. The book's opening epigraph is from Nietzsche: "Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?" Inez's attempt is a radical one: she assumes Abe's identity and spends much of her time passing as a man.

However, Koelb's use of Nietzsche is more ironic than profound. It's one thing to take action, yet quite another to overcome. Like all double lives, that of Inez is fraught with logistical nightmares and the ever-present fear of exposure, not to mention a child and being so haunted by her bloody deed that Abe inhabits her as much as she inhabits him. How does one walk such a tightrope when the only lifeline is a wisp of factory smoke?

Part two delves into transference. Does inhabiting another mean you also host their demons? Can one hope to escape poverty in a place such as Trenton? It's hard with a mutilated hand, closed factories, and dead-end service industry alternatives. There's another transference that I will not reveal, but suffice it to say that the burden of secrets, indiscretion, estrangement, the rise of the counterculture, decaying conditions in Vietnam, and Trenton's concomitant decline aren't compatible with a happy ending.

This is a tough, but occasionally brilliant book. Earlier I alluded to Steinbeck, which is quite a load to ask someone to bear, and Koelb can't always hoist it. Steinbeck excelled at fusing elegant prose with masterful storytelling. Koelb is a superb wordsmith, but sometimes he's too clever for his own good. I suspect other writers will rank this book higher than the reading public, parts of which will find the story thread hard to stitch. The book has two parts, but it's not linear within them and careful focus is needed to keep straight when Koelb is writing about Abe, Inez as Abe, Abe/Inez as Inez, or perhaps another person altogether. The motives of secondary characters are often as clouded as the true paternity of Inez's child and, to be frank, part two often feels forced.

Maybe this is okay and Koelb has little interest in narrative for its own sake. He certainly has important things to say and infer about American society. An iconic Delaware River bridge in Trenton bears the slogan: "Trenton Makes, the World Takes." Koelb suggests we should emphasize the second part and be wary of what is made in the first. Whether the proverbial average reader will get this remains to be seen, but props to Koelb for trying.

Rob Weir
Off-Center Views

This sounded very interesting. A woman living her life as a man in a post war uber masculine American culture of the 1940s and then a 25 year jump in time to revisit the same person in different circumstances and era. The book itself, though, didn't quite work for me. The narrative, while visceral and vivid, managed to maintain a sort of aloofness. Mainly, though, I just didn't care for any of the characters, including the protagonist, and with this sort of book you kind of really have to, because it's a personal journey sort of a story. Maybe this was meant to reflect on the gender and cultural limitations of the blue collar workers in a small town, but usually such stories of personal reinvention are more daring, more audacious, more exciting. And here the main character recreates herself as a factory worker named Abe who proceeds to pour copious amounts of alcohol on his muted rage and frustrations. So essentially the reader follows a story of a charmless unpleasant drunk who isn't comfortable in his life and makes sure no one in his ersatz family is either. The character seems to not lack merely redeeming qualities, but also almost any dimensionality. It's just a one note self loathing descent into a drunken stupor of an existence. Quick enough of a reading, some good descriptive writing, but the story doesn't do the premise justice. Thanks Netgalley.