All Souls (novel)
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| Author | Christine Schutt |
|---|---|
Publication date | 2008 |
| Publication place | United States |
All Souls is a 2008 novel by American writer Christine Schutt. The book takes place in New York City, and follows the lives of faculty and students at the fictional Siddons School.[1]
Writing and composition
[edit]The novel draws from Schutt's experience as a teacher at an all-girls school in Manhattan.[2] Since the book's publication, Schutt noted "types" from the school, Nightingale-Bamford, she would include if she were to rewrite it.[3]
All Souls was in part inspired by David Malouf's novel Remembering Babylon.[2] Despite perception that the novel "[pushes] the boundaries of fiction"[4] Schutt has said she did not intend for it to do so.[3]
Plot
[edit]The novel follows Astra Dell and her classmates at Siddons School over the course of their senior year.
Reception
[edit]Critical reception
[edit]Maud Casey, writing for the New York Times, referred to the novel as "refreshingly strange".[4] Casey compared the novel favorably to the work of Virginia Woolf, whose novels Schutt references in All Souls.[4] Publishers Weekly criticized Schutt for not "[doing] enough with the familiar prep school setting to make the story resonate".[5]
In a review of Schutt's depiction of marriages, David Winters referred to the book's omniscient narrator as "[...] lending a sense of distance" to the novel, in contrast with her earlier Nightwork, which featured first person narration.[6]
Honors
[edit]All Souls was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[7][8]
References
[edit]- ^ Knight, Michael (30 April 2019). "On the Literary Pitfalls of Writing About the Young and Rich". LitHub. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
- ^ a b Unferth, Deb Olin (1 May 2009). "Correspondence with Christine Schutt". Believer Magazine (62). Retrieved 29 December 2020.
- ^ a b Burke, Michelle Y. (14 October 2012). "An Interview with Christine Schutt | HTMLGIANT". htmlgiant.com. HMTLGiant. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
- ^ a b c Casey, Maud (29 August 2008). "My So-Called Death (Published 2008)". The New York Times. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
- ^ "All Souls". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
- ^ Winters, David (19 December 2012). "Difficult Intimacies: Christine Schutt's Dark Portraits of Marriage". Los Angeles Review of Books. The Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
- ^ "Finalist: All Souls, by Christine Schutt (Harcourt)". www.pulitzer.org. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
- ^ Charles, Charles (20 November 2012). "Book World: It's unhappily ever after in Christine Schutt's 'Prosperous Friends'". The Washington Post. Retrieved 29 December 2020.