The Golden State by Lydia Kiesling is a recommended debut novel about a young mother on the edge of a breakdown.

Daphne has a 16 month old daughter, Honey, a Turkish husband, Engin, who has been denied reentry to the USA by immigration officials, and a good university job at the Al-Ihsan Foundation for the Study of Islamic Societies and Civilizations in San Francisco when she suddenly decides to pack up a few things for her and Honey, flee San Francisco, and head to the high desert of Altavista, California. She inherited a mobile home there that she rarely visits, but her uncle has kept it in good repair. Stressed out by Engin's absence and haunted by the death of a student who was traveling on Institute funds, she thinks she needs an escape, a break to a quiet, simple life. Daphne is on the edge of a breakdown.

The novel follows 10 days in Daphne's life. Parenting alone with a 16 month old, trying to Skype with Engin to maintain their relationship, and filling the time during what feels like endless days, in an environment that is even more isolating for her is a dubious choice that may serve only to increase Daphne's isolation and loneliness. She meets a neighbor, Cindy, who is part of an anti-government, anti-immigration secessionist group, and meets a 92-year-old woman, Alice, who speaks a little Turkish and is visiting Altavista with a plan.

What worked was the raw emotion she captures in Daphne character. You can feel her honesty as she worries about Engin and Honey, and tries to be a good parent. She is struggling to find her way in her isolation. Mothers will recall many of Daphne's struggles with Honey and should be able to relate to the tantrums, the meal choices, nap time woes, and what can feel like endless boring routines involved in caring for a very young child who can't express themselves.

As for the writing - readers will have to be willing to overlook many long, run-on sentences with few commas. Kiesling's writing style may require some readers to pause and reread what they just read due to the aforementioned long run-on sentences. I did so several times, and, honestly, her writing style did begin to grate. The novel also begins to drag a bit as nothing much happens until very late in the narrative. The ending wasn't entirely successful for me.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2018/09/the-golden-state.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2535558828
https://www.librarything.com/work/21860737/book/160560942
https://twitter.com/SheTreadsSoftly/status/1042468028825456641

At first glance, Daphne has a great life. She’s in her early thirties, lives in San Francisco, is mother to a beautiful 16-month-old daughter, Honey, and is happily married, with a job that may not be the most satisfying, but pays well. The only problem? Thanks to Immigration officer intimidation at SFO airport her husband, Engin, had his green card taken away and was deported back to Turkey. She’s effectively a single mother and when The Golden State opens, she’s had enough. So she  takes Honey and goes up to the home her grandparents left her in Altavista, for what she hopes will be a nice break and quality time with her daughter.

"I did not have a thought in my head except go go go when I bundled her into the car yesterday and started the drive northeast but now I wonder if I just wanted to be with her and not in the office and whether I might have achieved this by taking to day off work and going to the playground for god’s sake."

This quote gives a clear sense of how The Golden State is going to go. Author Lydia Kiesling enters Daphne’s mind and never exits for breath until the novel’s final sentence.  There is a traditional structure for paragraphs and dialogue, but beyond that punctuation is minimal and a sentence could be a paragraph. Is it a bit intense? Yes, but for anyone who deals with anxiety, an ongoing internal dialogue is not unusual. When you factor in motherhood, it heightens the pathos and humor that comes with every single moment. It makes for the kind of reading that feels both foreign and close-to-home.

The Golden State is mostly a character study. The novel only spans the ten days that Daphne is away from her regular life and while things happen externally, it what’s going on internally that matters. She is struggling. She makes some foolish decisions—drinks too much and takes up smoking. She feels trapped and out-of-control because in many ways she is. She does everything right, but can’t get her husband back to the U.S. She’s lonely and alone. Kiesling conveys it all perfectly with sentences that ramble and swerve in the natural way of an overwhelmed mind. But when it’s necessary, she cuts to the chase in a way that makes my heart jump with recognition.

"I want to start screaming and I open my mouth wide to do it and nothing really comes out, just a tiny squeaking and I wake up feeling that there’s nothing a man can tell me about impotence."

The Golden State is filled with these kind of thoughts, lots of thoughts, and they’re not all just about motherhood. Kiesling goes beyond one woman in a singular situation and with humor, kindness, and determination creates reading that is relatable to all women.

The author's depiction of Daphne and of the choices that she made and the reasons behind them was stellar. The author made me feel for Daphne even as she was making a choice that I wouldn't make. This was a well written story that I hated to see end!

There’s so much I loved about Lydia Kiesling’s The Golden State. What stands out to me most is its portrayal of motherhood, but I also loved the picture of the northern Californian landscape and culture we get in the book, the portrayal of university life in the book’s beginning, and the poignancy and political commentary in the situation with the protagonist and her husband. I also really liked the novel’s voice — it was sharp, funny, smart, and communicated a world of feeling in an understated way. More at https://ofbooksandbikes.com/2018/09/12/lydia-kieslings-the-golden-state/

#TheGoldenState#NetGalley is a novel by Lydia Kiesling that begins when Daphne’s husband has his green card taken away, forcing him to leave California and return to Turkey leaving her and their almost 18 month year old daughter Honey behind. Daphne claims illness to her employer and goes with Honey to the family motor home that she has inherited.
A great deal of the book involves changing her daughter’s diaper and the day by day routine of having to care for her.
It gets a bit better after she meets 92 year old Alice.

Motherhood and a road trip, what a symbolic journey present to the reader by Lydia Kiesling. California plays the gorgeous backdrop that had me missing my days in the Golden State. A literal masterpiece was written, this book provides insight on so many levels for motherhood, relationships, and an internal road-map that is what we call life.

I'm a single mother of three children, ages 8 year old daughter and 6 year old twin boys and motherhood can literally be one winding road. I felt the intense narration of the book on so many levels, where I developed a love/hate relationship with Daphne. I can honestly say that there were times in the book where I hated her and wondering where Lydia Kiesling created her from. The other times, I felt this intense empathy with her because she really was just another mom struggling with various things. The book presents the high desert of motherhood.

I felt the Fear and Loathing of Motherhood in Daphne's tone and she was under the influence of isolation, mental health issues, and apparently at times disliked being a mother. The book goes through a ten day span, where she packs up everything and heads to begin a new life while her husband is overseas due to visa paper issues. There were times I felt bad for the daughter and felt Daphne could be an unlikable character. Her mono-tone narration made me want to yell at the book sometimes, like for real. At the same time, I felt, wait a minute, Daphne isn't so bad after all. She is realistic.

In connection to the book, I enjoyed the New York Times article that discusses this debut novel, https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/in-the-golden-state-lydia-kiesling-brings-motherhood-to-the-road-novel, written by Sarah Blackwood.

"Lydia Kiesling’s début novel, “The Golden State,” poses a provoking question for the genre: What happens when a mother hits the road and brings her toddler along for the ride? Daphne Nilson—like Huck Finn, like Sal Paradise, like Ishmael—is confused, melancholy, young, and up for adventure. She wants what they want: freedom, independence, a sense of purpose, and a discrete identity. But, when she feels “something tugging” her to get up and leave, the quality of the tug is different than that felt by those earlier heroes. It’s not just the pull of “nearly four hundred miles of road, leading up to the high desert,” but the more complicated desire to bring her sixteen-month-old daughter, Honey, along with her."

The Golden State definitely can be the perfect conversation piece when it comes to motherhood and discussing the topics involving it. After reading the article, it made me wonder if Daphne is selfish by taking this road trip? This is something I would love to ask the author Lydia Kiesling. This book evokes so many emotions and raises various interesting points on a wide variety of topics, but overall for me was the aspect of motherhood. Despite my love/hate relationship with the main character, I felt very in-touch and connected with this book. I've had life experiences that I myself, had to uproot my children and rebuild. I am a mother that craves certain things too, and yes there are times where I do something that may come off as selfish to others, but I still love being a mother too, but want to embrace self-care. There are two sides to this journey and I was definitely happy taking it by reading this thoughtful debut novel.




Thank you MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the gifted review copy to have the ability to have read this early.

{My Thoughts}
What Worked For Me
Kiesling Nailed New Motherhood – The Golden State is Daphne’s story and one of the many things you should know about Daphne is that she’s the mother of a 16-month old. She adores her daughter, Honey, but she’s also been going it completely alone for the last 8 months. Kiesling got all that right, weaving Daphne’s story together beautifully, but what stood out to me was how right she got motherhood. That back-and-forth between overwhelming delight in her child and the mind-numbing boredom and monotony of parenting a toddler was SO real. Daphne marked her days with times and even after doing what seemed like a huge amount, little time had passed. She couldn’t wait for Honey to go down for a nap, yet an hour later she found herself tempted to wake her child. Haven’t we all been there? I loved that Kiesling included so many first-time-mom woes like not being able to properly attach a rear-facing car seat, and worrying about just how many cheese sticks are too many.

Tangled Communications – Daphne is an extremely smart woman who finds herself alone after her Turkish husband, Elgin, has his Green Card revoked. The tangle of paperwork seems endless and during that he’s back in Turkey and she’s in the U.S. trying to handle everything AND keep him involved in Honey’s life and alive in her own heart. They communicate daily via Skype, which Daphne keenly observes is both a blessing and a curse.

“Maybe the thing really is that now we have these tools there’s the expectation that you will always be in touch. Overseas we called my grandparents every two weeks and we wrote letters and that was it and it was just easier than doing this Skype dance with all its awful reminders that the person you want to be here is not here. But Honey has to see her father’s face as much as she can while he’s not there, I think, and start crying, and I’m proud of myself because I think it’s been about two days since the last time I cried”

Raw Emotion – As you can see from the end of the above quote, Daphne is a woman at an emotional crossroads in her life. She knows something has to change, but no path she can see is clear and that anguish comes through beautifully in her story. Daphne’s a mess, as she should be. Life decisions are hard, especially when you feel alone. In fleeing to the comfort of the high-desert mobile home her grandparents once owned, Daphne is hoping somehow, beyond all logic, she’ll finally be able to make a decision. She’s long been burdened with the weight of not only her own life, but Honey’s and Elgin’s resting squarely on her shoulders. I felt Kiesling portrayed Daphne’s sorrow and pain in ways that were always real and sometimes unexpected.

What Didn’t
A Different Sort of Writing Style – Lydia Kiesling’s style of writing took some getting used to. She tends to write very, very long sentences and can be sparse on the use of commas. More than once I needed to go back and reread to make sure I’d captured the full meaning from such a sentence. I was particularly distracted by commas not being used to separate items in a series, which happened too often. On the positive punctuation side, she did use quotation marks! At times, I also found her writing a little on the pretentious side, using pharasing that would have benefited from more simplicity.

{The Final Assessment}
The Golden State was the first book I read from my Fall Preview 2018, so it had some big expectations to live up to. I was hoping for a fresh take on motherhood amidst a distinct California setting and that’s exactly what I got. Kiesling’s powerful story of isolation, loneliness, and hope far outweighed its few flaws. I consider The Golden State a fabulous kickoff to my fall reading and will look forward to more from this debut author.

Note: I received a copy of this book from MCD Books (via NetGalley) in exchange for my honest review.

I like punctuation. I get what Kiesling is trying to do and appreciate the style is meant to reflect Daphne's internal thought process. However, she lost me about a third of the way through because it was just too unbound. The dialogue between Daphne and Honey (well, the one way dialogue) is well done but it wasn't enough to carry the book for me. The other characters in the desert didn't feel new. That Daphne's husband Engin is Turkish and unable to get back to the US, as well as Daphne's work for an institute of Islamic studies adds a political aspect to this but it does not become polemic. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

I was drawn to this book because I live in Northern California. The writing style was difficult to adapt to. The plot seemed to meander. I didn’t have any opinion really about Daphne- which is a dangerous place for a reader to be in regarding the main character. In the end it just seemed to be a story I’ll forget in less than a month.

“This is my house, ” I say aloud, and everything in the house contradicts me, down to its dubious foundation.

It is to this house in the desert of Altavista with her baby girl Honey that Daphne flees, leaving behind her work at the University of San Francisco, a student who has never quite finished her PhD despite encouragement from those around her because “working at the institute has amply illustrated the precarious sh*tshow that is a life of the mind”. She is a single mother for all intents and purposes as her Turkish husband, Engin is trapped by a ‘processing error’ and cannot return to the United States of America. The novel follows Daphne and Honey through the desolation their lives have become in Engin’s absence. Single despite the occasional Skype with Honey’s daddy, a tiresome thing, Skype when her life is already consumed by meeting her child’s needs and demands. A desert seems a fitting place, because this is a sort of desert period for Daphne. The house is her grandparent’s mobile home, her mother is dead and it’s hers now. Her family had lived there for a long time, settled and rooted but this life doesn’t fit her.

You can’t expect a lot of dialogue between a baby and her mother and yet Kiesling manages to make Honey a solid person, whether she is cranky and whiney or like on Day 5 kissing her mommy’s face awake. That’s how we bond though, without words and there is a beautiful intimacy in it. It gets boring at times, and you feel as bogged down as she does but at least the baby is always real, present unlike so many stories where children are unnaturally silent the entire novel. I dont’ think such children exist in reality. Right now, ‘conversations are work’ and Daphne seems to both welcome and hate this self-imposed exile. She thinks Ellery and Maryam, having met their doom and compares the young women to her own very much alive child. But it’s a thought she doesn’t like to feed on, and in some strange way may shoulder a bit of blame for, or maybe not, can you bear the blame of fate’s whims? She should be opening emails, dealing with whatever mess she has jumped ship from back at the university, but she cannot find the wherewithal do it. She is in a sort of strange in-between time so many mother’s are familiar with after the birth of a child. Daphne plus one.

She meets the locals, and explains she works for an institute that studies Islamic studies which naturally begs the question, “Like Isis?” Daphne studies the language, and how countries share an islamic past. Bring up Muslim and hackles raise with a cry of Isis, which is often a shamefully believeable reaction in our country. She absolutely defends her husband and all the Muslims who don’t go around ‘blowing people up’ and plotting terrorism, yet this also isn’t the point of the novel. Despite this, she and Cindy become friends of sorts, even though she doesn’t agree with her ‘ideology.’ The biggest group of people are ‘State of Jeffersoners’, not the sort of group her husband Engin (if he ever returns to her) will be able to tolerate. The possibility of a life where her family’s people have been since the 1800’s just may not be a viable option for her. She gets caught up, somewhat, in the secessionists who don’t want to deal with ‘urban problems’. Generations of people who feel the government is robbing them of the resources they’ve always had to themselves. She meets an old ‘auntie-type’ Alice, who has been to Turkey and serves as a sort of stand in grandma, support she surely lacks with Engin scattered to the wind and the rest of her family dead. A woman who has had much loss and sadness of her own, that far surpasses anything Daphne is struggling with. They take up together on a trip and everything goes sour, this is the climactic moment in an otherwise quiet story.

The story touched on xenophobia here and there, but not as much as you would expect. I was disappointed that Engin was as absent for me as he seems to be for Honey and Daphne. I wondered if some bone thrown my way about their love would have made me care more. Engin aside, I enjoyed the tender moments as much as the exasperating ones between Daphne and Honey. The writing is beautiful but the story did drag often and I usually enjoy being a visitor in a character’s mind. Sometimes I felt as exhausted as Daphne. Good but nothing much happens until the very end.

Publication Date: September 4, 2018

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

This book is really attempting a lot of different things and I'm having trouble piecing it together from what it wanted to be into what it actually came off to me as.

Here is what I know:

1. We have Daphne and her baby, Honey. Daphne is married to Engin, who is a Turk and through bureaucratic loopholes has been deported back to Turkey. He's been gone 8 months.

2. Daphne works for some sort of Islamic Affairs institute at a university in San Francisco, CA. She was in charge of securing funding and making arrangements for two students to go to Turkey for a summer project. The two girls were in an accident while abroad and one was killed. Daphne has sort of freaked out about how the university and her institute is handling the crisis. That, combined with the increasing tension and uncertainty of her husband's situation, has caused her to flee to her family's semi-abandoned trailer in far northern California.

3. There is a group in this area that has become militant about wanting to secede from the Union.

4. Daphne befriends an ancient woman named Alice, who is 92 and is traveling alone for tragic reasons of her own. The facts surrounding Alice are pretty non-existent and actually very weird.

So, those are the facts.

What this book really reads like is a week-long diary of a frazzled mother. In that regard, it's weirdly fascinating. For 90% of the book, absolutely nothing happens except intensive views of Daphne caring for her baby.

Having had two babies of my own, that's where this book excels. Honey is the best character in the book and an extremely accurate depiction of the minutia of a 16-month old child. Still, while she's adorable, the endless details of this baby's every movement is boring, unless you're the one actually caring for the baby. Like I said, weirdly fascinating.

Still, I kept waiting for something to really happen, and it finally did, 90% in. And it was. . .weird.

Having lived my entire life in Texas, I've also lived with secessionists and their brand of politics as well. Nut jobs are nut jobs, no matter what kind of nut they are.

At first the writing style with all the jangled run-on sentences was kind of charming: it conveyed the harried, hurried thought processes of a young mother perfectly. Later on in the book, however, it became the norm for other people and events as well. And that's. . .not good.

I think maybe the intent was to convey some sort of global well-meaning with the Islamic community, but the federal policies and university dogma just bogged any of that down. The fact that the husband is kind of a not-present asshole doesn't help. And then he just drops off. Which I guess serves as a statement not to marry some guy from overseas?? I don't know - that whole thing was murky and. . .weird.

I wish I had better things to say. This was a book with a lot of dense writing about. . .nothing. Just people. With diapers thrown in.

If you've ever lived close-up with a baby, this could be weirdly interesting. But I'm afraid probably not.

Reading this novel, I got the feeling that the author must be jealous of all the books portraying Florida as the crown jewel of crazy states. After reading this, I would say California should not be dismissed in that regard. The novel itself just didn’t quite grab me and several things felt unresolved in the end.

I didn't see the point of this book. The main character leaves her good job in California to stay at her grandparents' former home where she idles away time, sending emails to her colleagues to make them think she's still working. Her husband is stuck in Turkey because of bureaucratic machinations. The baby is the only character that's likeable. I didn't care for the book.

This story takes place over about 9 days and is a story about a young woman who is not satisfied with her current life. She makes a snap decision to leave her job and take her 2 year old daughter to tell mobile home left to her by her grandparents in Altavista, CA. She meets a few interesting characters during her hiatus. The writing style made the book hard to read at times, due to the lack of punctuation, which led to a stream of consciousness feel. While I understand the purpose of the writing style--getting the reader into the mind of Daphne, feeling her anxiety and frantic pace of thinking--I had to consciously slow myself down frequently to follow what was going on. I found the ending to be a bit unsatisying, and with the exception of the main character, characters were not as well developed as I normally prefer in my books. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Imagine stepping inside one's consciousness, trapped with all the confusing thoughts that are a part of the yin and yang parts of our lives. Now imagine the character feeling trapped as well. Deliverance comes in the form of an emotional "tug at your roots" feeling toward the character.However, when it continues for so long despite the beautiful prose and despite the agony and ecstasy you feel, it can get a bit tiring. Those were my thoughts reading the beautifully written novel about Daphne, a young professional who feels the need to escape from her university job with her 16month old daughter, Honey.Anyone who has been a mother can relate to the ambivalence she feels tending to her while her Turkish husband is stuck abroad waiting for his green card which has been held up to an administrative snafu. After settling into a mobile home bequeathed to her in northern California, she meets an array of colorful characters while sorting out her life plans. For plot oriented fans, you may be disappointed but for lovers of beautiful run on dialogue you will be extremely pleased.

While I enjoyed the plot and character development in "The Golden State" by Lydia Kiesling, the first few chapters were tough reading as I adapted to the author's style (lack of punctuation (particularly commas), run on sentences, stream of conscious narrative). The intensely told story of Daphne, a young mother who's husband has been sent back to Turkey due to an "input error" on his green card, of sorts. She works for a university foundation, assisting students who wish to study in Asia (among other administrative tasks) and simply walks out of her job one day to return to the home she inherited from her grandparents and mother. The entire novel covers slightly more than a week, while Daphne and her daughter Honey learn of the rural area and interact with new and old acquaintances. There is a side plot of a secessionist movement seeking to split up the state of California and one involving an elderly woman navigating her past, all while Daphne and Honey contemplate next steps. The ending is a little unsatisfying, but this is a thought provoking read which would work well for literary-minded book discussion groups.

This is a book about a woman in the midst of a severe depression who runs away from her life to forget everything that’s affecting her. She’s functional and manages but her depression is deep. She’s sympathetic and sad and you feel for her situations — all of them. It’s written in an almost stream of consciousness which makes it a bit annoying to read at times but also gets you inside her head and the writing is gorgeous. It’s a tragic and beautiful story, and the ambiguous ending felt appropriate

The setting--over 10 days when, Daphne, a young mother, flees her university job/life in San Francisco with her toddler, Honey, for the high desert of Altavista, California. Her Turkish husband, Engin, is back in Turkey because of a "processing error." Daphne heads to the mobile home she inherited from her mother who inherited it from her mother. She sets up her solitary existence [punctuated with overseas calls/Skype to her husband--when she can get wifi off her neighbor, Cindy--part of a secessionist movement, the State of Jefferson]. She befriends 92-year old Alice, who's on a road trip! And she smokes and drinks too much. And feeds Honey string cheese--quite often.

3.5 but rounding up because of the often beautiful writing and originality of story. I admired, rather than liked this book.

Some of the descriptions of life with Honey were just spot on. She "called from her crib like a marooned sailor." Her diaper had "enormous squishy heft." And another time, "...the diaper has been breached." “Her sounds are no longer supported by the scaffolding of crying and are just awful rhythmic shouts."

Her body: "...pouch that Honey has vacated has achieved greater prominence."

Her Buick was like a "padded coffin."

Her work--"...I can just listen to all the people who did choose and presumbly weave them into some tattered tapestry of erudition." [phew]

Altavista, for which she feels no great love, feels has "Everything [is] on the edge of town; the town is comprised of edges..."

And so on.

But, I didnt always like the voice/narration. And I didnt much care for Daphne.

This is a debut novel. I look foward to seeing what Kiesling does next.

This book is about the complicated lifestyle about a mother and her baby. The mother is trying to make sense of the world and she is slowly unravelling. This book is almost a road trip but not quite ! Her complicated life style leads her on to people who also have their own share of problems along the way. This book was very wordy, we had a blow by blow account of her day/days over a period of 10 days. On the whole I enjoyed this book but much of it was unnecessary and it could have been a simpler story with the same outcome.

This book was well written and very fun to read. The characters were great and I enjoyed the world building. The author does a great job at introducing the characters and moving the plot along. There were a few things that I didn't like, but it wasn't enough to really sway me one way or the other. It's definitely a story that I can get lost in and both feel for the characters. It is definitely a go-to novel that I highly recommend to anyone who loves a great read. Definitely a highly recommended read that I think everyone will enjoy.