Linden's exploration of the conflicting identities, responsibilities and expectations that comes with modern womanhood is poignant.

She soars when explores the neuroses of the narrator and Jane, her oldest child as well as the conflicting and brutally honest feelings the narrator has towards her role as mother and wife. All characters serve as a vessel and reflection, of a source of projection and gathering for the main character. And although this is incredibly interesting, if it was taken a step further, if these characters outside of the main character were more fully described, there'd be more rich inner and outer conflict to dive into. What happens when the imagined realities of those around here and the traits she's adopted from them aren't aligned with their lived realities?

Setting is interesting as well, but takes a background role. Although the setting of NY during COVID serves as a way to provide further isolation and inward reflection, it's assumed the main character has always been this way.

Overall, this was a pleasant read and dive into this modern character's everyday life interacting with her identities.

A mother of two young children goes about her day-to-day life in an unremarkable week. Whether it is getting her children out of the house each morning or leading the classes she teaches at a local school, she observes how her children steer through their own worlds as her students do the same. In the process, she learns more about her family, her colleagues, and, most of all, herself.

This is a perceptive examination of daily life, exploring interesting themes about family, work, and the power of daily life.

Highly recommended!

This felt a little detached and all over the place for me and at times was hard to follow. I see the potential and will read more by this author.

This is an extremely short book. It is like a documentary on the life of a young woman who is juggling multiple roles. She is a part-time English teacher, a mother to two very young kids and a wife to her always busy husband who is travelling a lot or now in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic working from home on his computer. This is not a pandemic novel, rather it deals with the new normal phase post the height of the pandemic where most people were vaccinated and had caught it and recovered yet masking was a norm and schools were still hybrid. Our narrator witnesses a troubling physical interaction between one of the students and a teacher to whom she generally reports. This causes her to raise an alarm. There is no real plot as such and the novel is more the study of the life of a contemporary urban working woman and deals with a host of nuances of contemporary life. It was interesting in its own way and an easy quick read.

Thank you Netgalley, W W Norton & Gillian Linden for the ARC.

No, this is not a pandemic novel. It's a slice of life for a part time teacher in a post pandemic world who sees and reports inappropriate contact between another teacher and a student. Or was it? The teacher finds herself down a rabbit hole and ultimately questioning herself. Her family is in the background as she spirals. Over to others as to whether the teens speak like teens or as carefully curated teens. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

i love books about women having mental breakdowns.

i don't know if this was that, but it was excellent.

this was a brilliant exploration of womanhood, of what it means to mother and to work and to try to do your moral best and look around at everyone else and be unconvinced they're doing any of it — and for that worry to extend so far you wonder if you're actually doing any of it yourself.

this encapsulation of a few days in one ordinary life totally riveted me. i loved the protagonist's children, and while i wish a few more things were fleshed out - the husband, the babysitter, the ending - all in all this felt like drinking a cool glass of water.

A wonderful collision of the mundane, suspicions, and danger. Taut and enthralling. Had to finish it in one sitting.

Oh dear. I guess I’m not the right readership for this novel. I’m not obsessed with small children and the funny things they say., and I don’t much care about schools and their difficult, modish rules about inappropriate behavior and conduct. So this short, obsessively narrowly focused book, with yes, some witty moments but almost no flesh on its bones, just didn’t transport me. Maybe you have to be a thirty something mom, with a busy husband and an urban lifestyle to really delight in its preoccupations. But that’s just the definition of narrow appeal.
Anyway, pleasantly written, but not much of an event, in my view.

.25

In the thick of the pandemic (the longer, draggier part where we were trying to take precautions and navigate life), a part-time private school English teacher tries to get through her week. She has two young children, a distant husband who’s always on work calls and rarely engages in their family life, and did she see her only work friend in an inappropriate interaction with a student? This is a portrait of motherhood in our charged times.

I wanted to like this book so badly, because it’s the kind of plotless character study I enjoy, but it dragged and never really came together. Linden struggled to say anything about the themes that explored them meaningfully, and the characters all felt flat and unfinished. The prose was…uninteresting, at best. There were occasional glimmers of what potential Linden has, but this wasn’t great.

I don't know how I feel about this one. I liked the one week time frame for the book to be set in, but it didn't always feel the most compelling to me - but maybe that was the point? I found the most interesting part to be obviously the question of Jeremy and Olivia, and i did like that the answer was left ambiguous, but I think I would have liked more intentional interactions with her children, Jane and Lewis.

As far as plot goes, this novel doesn't do much, but it absolutely shines in describing the casual cruelty of children. Gillian Linden really gets the inanities of parenthood, and does a great job at capturing what it's like in a moment of time for a woman of a certain class, education, etc. I didn't feel like I knew much about the narrator, but her thought process was very familiar. The second-guessing, justifying, ruminating, and minimizing were actually painfully familiar. I wish there had been a little more movement in the plot so that it could have gone beyond a really good internal narrative.

I had very mixed feelings about this book. I quite liked the structure with the plot broken down by days during a single week. I also liked that it was short - many contemporary fiction books are unnecessarily long. It felt like a slow burn, but I felt it didn't have a satisfying resolution, but also didn't have a satisfying feeling of ambiguity. In places, I found the writing was quite good in some places but in other places I didn't like it as much - I would say it was good 75% of the time. I found much of the dialogue stilted - the parts with the students were better. This is a title I would be reasonably happy to borrow from a library, but wouldn't have felt was worth the money to purchase.

Negative Space was unique with interesting characters, but it was so short — I feel like it ended right when I started to become invested. Not much happens here but it was dark and humorous. 3.5/5

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

3.5

I feel like I would’ve given a higher rating if this was longer, I wanted more detail, more days with these characters.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the ARC!

This was an enjoyable and unique story. It gave me Emily Austin vibes with some of the dark themes, humor, and sad reality of life in general.

Sometimes I have no issue reliving Covid, but parts of this book did get to me.. I think it’s worth checking out if you’re a fan of character driven writing

This one was different, but I enjoyed it. At times I was a bit thrown off the story, but I could usually get back in quickly. Looking forward to reading more from author.

This book was not for me. Normally I enjoy a sort of deadpan straightforward narrator but this was too flat. I didn't care about her, her work, the children, any characters at all. I also felt like it was supposed to be that Covid was in the past but that's not reality. I don't see the point in writing about actual events if you give a false ending to them, especially one that is still going on now. Everyone talked the same--a strange stilted way I have never heard a child speak like. It made the book a slog even though it was relatively short.

Thanks to NetGalley and W.W. Norton for the ARC!

I really wanted to like Gillian Linden’s "Negative Space," but the book never quite came together for me. Thematically, it’s interesting, and I think the setting is ripe for a book like this.

This is also one of the most effective depictions of teaching COVID, down to even the smallest details like how students talk about plagiarism. There were a few lines in here that summoned a visceral, full-body shudder due to Linden’s attention to the nuances of pandemic-influenced education. I also appreciate that this book has no real center—it sits in the negative space many of us experienced during the pandemic, and readers can feel the protagonist floundering for some sort of narrative momentum in a way that feels very relatable.

Even so, the prose never quite clicked for me. This book feels shaggy, which is especially odd given its brevity. For taking place in a school, it’s remarkable how little the kids sound like kids—they all have a similar, eerily precocious sort of insight that feels less than intentional. The cadence of every conversation in the book feels slightly off—slightly vacant. It is shuffling and disinterested, but again, never in a way that feels purposeful. All of these issues coalesce in a way that makes "Negative Space" feel like an early draft of ideas that have’t been whittled down into a book yet.

This isn’t a bad novel outright, but its haphazardness makes it one I am unlikely to recommend, especially when there are so many incredible books that explore these themes more effectively. All in all, I would say it’s just disappointing.

This book was ok! It's essentially a novel-length vignette, a snapshot of a few days or so in the life a teacher and mother as she navigates a difficult workplace conflict after witnessing an inappropriate interaction between her boss and a student within a school system that doesn't particularly support her. As an educator myself I was able to slip right in and connect with the story on that level; I'm genuinely not sure how the story would affect someone a little farther from the subject matter. I would recommend this book to someone looking for something in this vein specifically but don't feel it's a reading experience I must offer up to everyone.

I don't know if I have ever read a book like Negative Space. Absolutely enthralling! Linden pulls you in with her sparse and deadpan writing. As a teacher, I certainly enjoyed and appreciated her look at school bureaucracy.

Negative Space is a week in the life of an part time English Teacher working at a private school. The teacher witnesses a potentially controversial action and is forced to make decisions. It is truly a slice of life story and so well written that you will still be thinking about this school and the event many days later (as I am). This short book, almost a novella, is perfect for lovers of contemporary lit, books about school and of course the slice of life story telling style.
#negativespace #gillianlinden #whnorton #netgalley