Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an e-arc of this book!

I really loved this novel, both in style and in substance. The way the story is told--through second person as our main character relates her life to folks in her hometown bar with her--was so effective for me, because the story unravels in a way that mimics memory. There are flash forwards to the past and the future, digressions about things that aren't really relevant to the story being told, reflections about what's happening through the future lens...and it all worked so well. The craft of this novel is extremely well done.

I think if you don't care about the family in this novel, it's just not going to work for you. There's really no plot. We learn more about our main character, her sister, her mother, and her father (as well as her stepdad, later on) as she gets closer to what she feels is the moment when her life changed and set her on a path she can't escape from: her father dying. But there's no plot outside of her sitting in the bar telling her life story. This novel depends on the character work and the reader feeling emotionally invested in this family, which I was.

The novel handles some hard themes in it, and I thought it did it well. The way the character speaks of her own malaise was well done and, again, felt authentic and realistic. I wish we had gotten maybe a chapter or two more, because the end does come rather swiftly, but the last line is also...chilling, in a way. It's quite a tragic ending, because the character is not in the best of places emotionally or mentally (TW for suicidal ideation) and the novel doesn't leave you with any answers as to what happens next.

Big CW for the dad dying if that's something you've gone through. There were some similarities to my own experience (a lot of this novel felt eerily relatable), so that was hard to read. If you're not in a great headspace to read that on the page, then I would recommend holding off on this novel until you're ready, if it's something you're interested in.

Definitely a novel I'll want to return to at some point.

Based on the premise, I thought this would be dark and fun...and the cover made me think it would be modern and cool?! But instead we got something slow and only marginally interesting. Lol. I DNF.

Thank you to NetGalley and FSG for the e-ARC! I did not think I would have a whole lot to say about this one considering the first 60% of this book had me considering a DNF. I had no idea how much the last 40% would carry it to a whole new level and bring it some strong redemption. Island City is a novel from a first person perspective as a drunk middle aged woman tells her life story. This point of view fluctuated between being an interesting concept in the synopsis to being punishingly long winded in the exposition and then to devastatingly real at the end. I did not expect to feel the emotional whiplash I’m feeling from this one but thank you to the reviewers that insisted on reading until the end.

𝑰 𝒅𝒐𝒏’𝒕 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒚 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕, 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑰 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒓𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒂𝒍𝒔 𝒎𝒆 𝒔𝒐 𝒔𝒖𝒓𝒆𝒍𝒚 , 𝒏𝒐 𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒍𝒚 𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒐𝒇 𝒎𝒚𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒇 𝒂𝒔 𝒎𝒚𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒇. 𝑰𝒕’𝒔 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒕𝒐𝒐 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒑𝒍𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒅.

I reviewed Laura Adamczyk’s story collection 𝐻𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑙𝑦 𝐶ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑛 in 2018, hopeful that there would be a novel to follow. Enter 𝐼𝑠𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐶𝑖𝑡𝑦, a gorgeous first novel, with writing that hooked me from the start. The narrator has moved back to her small Midwest hometown, she has given up everything and decided this is the place to fade away. Here she is of no consequence, it’s a place that lags behind. She spills her guts in a local bar to strangers and what follows is a playfully devastating decline into what brought her to such a morose state. I felt an echo of a distant past as she talked about her big sister, it rubbed up against old memories of being the youngest. As the distance between them grows, they go from being co-conspirators to strangers in adulthood. She confides that her mother and sister no longer live in Island City, as she keeps drinking, she loosens up and talks about her dad, the jokester and his death fifteen years ago. What happened to him feels like a demon lurking in the dark corners of her mind, waiting to pounce. Has she inherited his terrible forgetting? His disease?

It’s an emotional journey, a seesaw of highs and lows. Her slow retreat doesn’t come as a shock, it’s there in the way she assumes Sister will shoulder the harder responsibilities while she is blinded by pain. She admits, “I liked the feeling of observing without participating.” She learns fast that withholding her presence is a sharper sword than any other action, but what about disappearing from yourself? She knows exactly what event caused her sinking, it’s her father’s cancer, his dementia, the shock of witnessing the deterioration. It breaks her, it’s not something she can move on from. It is that much harder to bear when he hasn’t ever really been present, not fully. Reaching into the past, it’s moving when she wonders about how their father lives his days when her parents’ divorce, when she and her sibling aren’t there with him. The antics they get up to when children weren’t hovered over all the time, speaks of another world, begging the question how did any of us survive our ideas? The dynamics between the girls and their mother is a strange dance, that can feel like tenderness and punishment. So much of this novel speaks of her family’s misfortune, the pain they cause each other, the trickery of fate, the genetics she is terrified she won’t dodge. It felt like sitting with a lonely woman at the bar who just wants to talk, despite being someone who isn’t participating in the world. Some memories float up, with no purpose, just like they do in our heads. It’s as though the first part of the book is our narrator bracing herself for the rupture in her family. Rather than coming together, a split happens, as if she is saving them all from future anguish through estrangement. Her beginning and ending are shaved off, as she tells us, all she has is the middle and it seems she has become stuck there.

What befalls their father is the natural order of things but out of time, it feels cruel. There are still funny incidents, it’s a fact they use humor to keep from breaking down. The end can’t be put off and the aftermath is more pain and a sense of being rudderless. Will she end it all, or will Sister find her? Is there hope, even when she decided to give up?

It’s not a novel that explodes with action, but there is something cryptic and clouded in the memories she shares and that is what pulled me from the start. Maybe it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but the style worked for me. It is hauntingly original and that Adamczyk can find warmth in a family that is almost embarrassed by need and weakness was my undoing. I will be following this author.

Publication Date: March 14, 2023

Farrar, Straus and Giroux


I reviewed Laura Adamczyk’s story collection Hardly Children in 2018, hopeful that there would be a novel to follow. Enter Island City, a gorgeous first novel, with writing that hooked me from the start. The narrator has moved back to her small Midwest hometown, she has given up everything and decided this is the place to fade away. Here she is of no consequence, it’s a place that lags behind. She spills her guts in a local bar to strangers and what follows is a playfully devastating decline into what brought her to such a morose state. I felt an echo of a distant past as she talked about her big sister, it rubbed up against old memories of being the youngest. As the distance between them grows, they go from being co-conspirators to strangers in adulthood. She confides that her mother and sister no longer live in Island City, as she keeps drinking, she loosens up and talks about her dad, the jokester and his death fifteen years ago. What happened to him feels like a demon lurking in the dark corners of her mind, waiting to pounce. Has she inherited his terrible forgetting? His disease?

It’s an emotional journey, a seesaw of highs and lows. Her slow retreat doesn’t come as a shock, it’s there in the way she assumes Sister will shoulder the harder responsibilities while she is blinded by pain. She admits, “I liked the feeling of observing without participating.” She learns fast that withholding her presence is a sharper sword than any other action, but what about disappearing from yourself? She knows exactly what event caused her sinking, it’s her father’s cancer, his dementia, the shock of witnessing the deterioration. It breaks her, it’s not something she can move on from. It is that much harder to bear when he hasn’t ever really been present, not fully. Reaching into the past, it’s moving when she wonders about how their father lives his days when her parents’ divorce, when she and her sibling aren’t there with him. The antics they get up to when children weren’t hovered over all the time, speaks of another world, begging the question how did any of us survive our ideas? The dynamics between the girls and their mother is a strange dance, that can feel like tenderness and punishment. So much of this novel speaks of her family’s misfortune, the pain they cause each other, the trickery of fate, the genetics she is terrified she won’t dodge. It felt like sitting with a lonely woman at the bar who just wants to talk, despite being someone who isn’t participating in the world. Some memories float up, with no purpose, just like they do in our heads. It’s as though the first part of the book is our narrator bracing herself for the rupture in her family. Rather than coming together, a split happens, as if she is saving them all from future anguish through estrangement. Her beginning and ending are shaved off, as she tells us, all she has is the middle and it seems she has become stuck there.

What befalls their father is the natural order of things but out of time, it feels cruel. There are still funny incidents, it’s a fact they use humor to keep from breaking down. The end can’t be put off and the aftermath is more pain and a sense of being rudderless. Will she end it all, or will Sister find her? Is there hope, even when she decided to give up?

It’s not a novel that explodes with action, but there is something cryptic and clouded in the memories she shares and that is what pulled me from the start. Maybe it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but the style worked for me. It is hauntingly original and that Adamczyk can find warmth in a family that is almost embarrassed by need and weakness was my undoing. I will be following this author.

Publication Date: March 14, 2023

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The stories in this collection are character-driven, with each story focusing on the experiences of different individuals who are struggling to come to terms with their own emotions and the world around them. Adamczyk's writing is understated yet powerful, drawing readers in with her vivid descriptions and insights into the human condition.

This collection is Adamczyk's ability to create fully realized characters that readers can easily empathize with. Whether it's the young woman grappling with the end of a relationship, the teenage boy dealing with his mother's illness, or the man coming to terms with his own mortality, each character is given the depth and nuance needed to make them feel real and relatable.

This is a powerful and moving collection of stories that showcases Adamczyk's talent for creating compelling characters and exploring the complexities of the human experience. This is a must-read for fans of literary fiction and short stories, and anyone who enjoys a well-crafted and emotionally resonant narrative.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for letting me read this ahead of publication.

Unfortunately I have to DNF this.
The writing style is not really working for me and even though I was kind of prepared for an unlikable character, I just didn't vibe with this one.

DNF at 25%.

The blurb states that a woman spills her life story to a bar full of strangers.

So, I thought this story would give off dark vibes with at least a little interaction with the strangers in the bar. But what I got was a dreary monologue from the narrator.

I stopped reading not long after the narrator described a woman as having “chunky tits” and “chicken legs.”

I could have kept reading because it is quite a short story, but I didn’t want to force myself.

Thank you to the publisher for providing an arc via Netgalley.

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.

She makes me the 𝘺𝘰𝘶 in the book, in the bar, near to the wild heart.

I’m listening. To the past. To the decorative details, too specific, too far from my empathy. I yawn a bit as she glosses over her sister, her dad, misremembering things, saying them as they aren’t. She’s drunk and unreliable. Saying them as she wished they happened.

Love, how it stretches and folds and mutilates itself and learns to regrow from a stub through the trauma we are born into, that dead ends at the chafing of the stub in a pain we only know when cul de sac’ed into the trap that is a family.

What is home? Do the memories we make shape us? Why are some details more important than others? Why do some come to mind faster? Because we care?

And there is care in the decorative details. They matter, as Adamczyk’s narrator mulls over them like seashells polished by sun and desperate eyesore. To savor, to keep close.

The story then loosens, paves a muddy road to why she is back in her hometown, here with you, and she is less of a flourish and more of a floundering of fight-or-die furies. Adamczyk is skilled at keeping us distracted in the sleight of hand in an unreliable narrator, only to let us fall flat in the ambush of love’s labor’s loss in honest representation of siblingship not often seen in literature. The way we save, the way we nurture. The way we stand up and all the ways we let slide. It’s a slippery slope, siblingship, but it’s the life raft and the destination all at once. Now I know what home means when I look at my own brothers.

The book softens with an aching melancholy that we know too well. And we empathize, lean in a bit closer, let the ice melt in our drinks, and settle into who she is. At her core.

And at her core she is us. Wanted. Needed. Loved.

Hard call for this one. It's one long bar talk by an unnamed 37 year old who has moved back to Island City and is worried that she, like her father, might have Alzheimer's. She tells her life story, including the downward trajectory of her career and her struggles with her family, to patrons at a bar. It's a monologue that is oddly both engaging and annoying. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. It's an unusual read for fans of literary fiction.

Island City is a novel told in second person to an audience (and you, the reader) at a bar in the narrator's hometown.

Our narrator starts from the beginning. She relays her whole life story, all leading up to where she ended up in life.

There really isn't much more to say.

You learn of our narrators trials and tribulations, her relationships with her parents and sister, and the way she ends up coping with her grief.

I enjoyed the writing style, and there were moments of brilliant clarity. As well as an astute exploration of the bond between sisters. Buttttttt...there just wasn't enough to make me feel like the ending was worth all that build-up. This reminded me of My Year of Rest and Relaxation in how I felt bamboozled by the end.

Good writing, but alas, I didn't find this to be an enjoyable or enlightening read.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and FSG for this ARC in exchange for my honest review! (:

I was picturing something like Ordinary Hazards by Anna Bruno when I picked this title, which probably wasn't fair because I adored that book. Unfortunately this didn't strike a chord with me, but I will still purchase a copy for our collection.

A woman walks into a bar and tells her life strangers to a bunch of strangers. In my opinion, it is the perfect set up to for a compelling book. Laura Adamczyk manages to craft a character in these pages that feels like a real person, someone you know or could know. This is a story about memory and its ephemeral nature, about mental health and aging, about trying to run from one narrative in your life and into the arms of your past. The portrayal of an agent parent with dementia/Alzheimer's shook me deeply to my core and left an emotional imprint on me.

I found at some points the use of speaker to the reader as "you" as if we are really in this dive bar with her a bit gimmicky. I am sure the story would be just a strong without this device.

I am impressed by Adamczyk and certainly look forward to all her future work.

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. This first novel is set in a bar where one of Island City’s daughters has returned to give the story of her life. It’s a story that no one has seemed to ask for and that no one seems to be able to stop. The narrator tells the story of her older sister, mother and father. He father left in a divorce, then later got cancer, developed early Alzheimer’s, then cancer again. Our narrator is also starting to forget words and things, so now she wants to get the full story of her life out before the end comes for her.

A solid debut. It is a very unique format, a first person narrative from a middle-aged woman telling her life story at the local pub. I don't know that I have seen anything quite like that. The tone and diction, consequently, is very conversational, familiar. The result is a mixed bag. Given the choice to construct the novel and its narrative this way, it is very difficult to build any momentum in the story or get a real grasp for the characters other than the narrator. There is very little dialogue. But some of the stories and vignettes contained within the long narrative are fantastic. It can read at times like a long string of collected small stories and vignettes. I love the setting and love how the alcohol being consumed changes the storytelling. There is a lot to like, a lot to not like, but nothing to hate and, thus, I think it is a good effort for a first novel.