Barbara

The title character of this novel talks to her readers commenting on her childhood in the Atomic Age through her rise as an actor. Death is a main theme in the book, from the atomic bombs, to her mother's suicide, the JFK assassination, to the death of her caretaker, and then her father. The writing style is fascinating as Barbara relates the incidents of her life to the unknown reader. Barbara is an interesting psychological and historical novel.

The wonder is that the titular character of Joni Murphy’s “Barbara,” an aspiring actress, isn’t more psychological scarred than she is, what with her mother having killed herself and her father having been involved with the Manhattan project, making for unsettling ruminations about thermonuclear war for Barbara (“most will die immediately,” she notes, “and the ones that don’t will wish they had”) and her having had two abortions, one of which is the more chilling for the coldly clinical way in which it’s presented.
So scarring, indeed, have been her experiences that they lend special personal relevance to an experiment she describes in which baby monkeys are deprived of their mothers' care and end up walking in endless circles, putting me in mind of a similar experiment recounted in Louise Doughty’s “Apple Tree Yard” in which mother and baby chimps are put into a cage with an electrified floor and the mothers initially seek to protect their babies but invariably end up placing the babies on the floor and standing on them (who comes up with these experiments?)
For all the compelling, even riveting, reading that the individual scenes in Murphy’s novel make for, though, there’s not really an overall plot as such, something that seems more and more the case in current fiction, perhaps most notably in Rachel Cusk.
Not, again, that individual moments in Murphy’s novel aren’t dramatically compelling (and not just with Barbara, but with her friend Suzanna, when she’s on a trip to the Keys and wakes with a terrible sensation all over and is told it’s a kind of plant pollen, or with Barbara’s husband-to-be Lev, when he’s in the war and comes upon a concentration camp, with its “chemicals and burnt railroad ties, petrol and gangrenous flesh, quicklime and feces”) but the fiction traditionalist in me would have liked a conventional story arc.
Also, and here I’m admittedly picking nits but citing them anyway in the hope that there’s still time for corrections before publication, a car’s “breaks” (rather than, of course, brakes) squeal when the vehicle slows, and when Barbara says there are too many things for her to “innumerate,” she means “enumerate,” and in a scene which I’ve read five times just to make sure I’m not misreading it, a character named Thomas gets his nose broken but in subsequent sentences he’s identified as someone attending to the victim, who is identified as Sylvan several sentences later.

"What is poisoned may stay poisoned for generations to come."

I approached this novel expecting a deep dive into the trials of fame and Hollywood (think Marilyn Monroe). However, what I encountered was a profound character study that delved into generational trauma. The narrative intricately explores how the protagonist’s parents and their past profoundly influenced her own life. In parallel, we see a similar story at the societal level.

The time period in which the story unfolds plays a crucial role, amplifying the themes of trauma and cause and effect. It’s a fascinating exploration of how the weight of the past can shape our identities.

This novel left a lasting impression on me and I'll be reflecting on the themes for a while. Thank you NetGalley and Astra Publishing House for the ARC!

Well, this is highly recommended to all my girlies who took the term “bombshell” literally.

There is so much to love here. My favorite section was one devoted to describing shot by shot an early 70s vampire flick. Such a visually stunning reading experience. Don’t you love when books do that?

I was so excited to get this ARC. And I’m frequently excited to get an ARC. But this one delivered on higher expectations than I could ever even imagine or provide you in this review. Please read this and tell me what you think. I’ve thought about this book for hours.

4.5 ⭐️

I think that I will have to revisit this review as I continue to sit with the book, but I really loved Joni Murphy's Barbara. I am biased; it touches upon many things that deeply interest me, personally: mid-20th century America, the problematization of celebrity, physics and the obsession of the scientist with forward progress, parental relationships complicated by tragedy and circumstance, beauty and femininity, and the experiences and motivations of performers. I think it is worthwhile for anyone interested in any one of those subjects to read this book. I thought the form was also interesting and appreciated the inclusion of photographs to ground the faux memoir in the material world.

I can see why readers who prefer a plot-driven book might feel like Barbara goes nowhere and has no point. I would not recommend the book to people who need a meaty plot and/or to those who don't enjoy literary fiction. I, clearly, don't feel this way. I enjoyed this as an expanded character study of a complex woman who has experienced a life that is at once fabulously charmed and extremely difficult. I will definitely be recommending this book to many people in my life with whom I think Barbara will resonate.