I am not sure that the writing style in this book is for me. The overall idea is very intriguing but, in my opinion, it all got lost and jumbled along the way. Not for me, but could be a good fit for others!

I really struggled to gain traction with this book. The opening scenes were quite arresting with a man jumping over the George Washington bridge to the horror of his girlfriend, Junie. Stan (a little over the limit for drink driving) and his wife Karen become embroiled in the saga as they drive by the scene, calling Stan's brother, Pickle, a New York cop, to keep Stan out of any trouble. Taking pity on Junie, Karen invites her to stay in their home while she recovers. Pickle takes a shine to Junie but it isn't really reciprocated. And there, the action peters out. The rest of the narrative falters, there seems to be no particular direction in which to take the book and it develops as slowly as the house Stan and Karen are building. I did plough on to finish the book, but it took a lot of effort with no natural pull in the story or in any particular character. Overall a disappointment.

The plot was interesting but I didn't enjoy the writing style or the characters. I would try another book by the author but this wasn't for me

The book begins with such intensity that it definitely had my attention. New York seems to be the best setting for a story. I would have definitely given this book all the love, but the second half was not as exciting as the beginning. I enjoyed the dysfunctional characters; the story was funny at times with a dark undertone. This was definitely a pleasant surprised and I can’t believe this was a debut novel. The writing was great, I look forward to reading more from this author.

This opening of this novel is promising: a wealthy NYC couple returning from a night out drinking get in to an accident and in the process discover a young girl on a bridge whose lover has just jumped. The man calls his twin brother, a police officer, to tidy their mess up, and the couple takes the shaken young girl home and moves her into their basement apartment to give her time and space to recover from her loss and shock. Yes! I want to read this! Unfortunately, the rest doesn't quite pan out. The characters are reckless, self-centered, and just really unlikeable (except for the young girl, though we don't get to know her as much). For me, the plot really just churned along. Not an unpleasant read, but it didn't really go anywhere. Then "boom" an abrupt epilogue and it was over :( I know this is a debut author, and for that reason I hate to come across as too critical. I think there is potential here, but this one just didn't work for me. Thank you NetGalley and publishers for providing a digital ARC for review.

If this was a book about entirely unlikable characters doing wild, unexplainable things then the author has absolutely excelled with Pickle's Progress. However, I'm not convinced that that was the intention so I can't give a higher rating at this point!

Talk about a book that starts off with a bang, WOW! We are introduced to the four characters of this novel, Karen, Stan, Pickle, and Junie. Stan and Karen are driving along with they crash as they stare at a woman on the side of the road (Junie). Her boyfriend just jumped off the bridge and she was supposed to as part of a joint suicide pact. We learn Stan's twin brother, Pickle, is a police officer and hopefully he can get this situation under control.

The book started out strong and then wavered a little bit. Sometimes these four were in unbelievable situations which made it a little less enjoyable to read. Also, one of my pet peeves in a book is not having every issue resolved...guess what...some things are left unanswered. UGH! If you enjoy that in a book, this is right up your alley. If you need a concrete ending, this one isn't for you!

This debut novel is written in a way that places the reader in a hovering position above the characters and action. Marcia Butler has told such an interesting story with surprises and rawness at every turn, that it was a bit disappointing to feel so deflated by the ending.

First, though, let’s talk about the setting. New York City and its structures – both natural and human-made – are relatively prominent in the story. From the George Washington Bridge to varying forms of apartments and office buildings, as well as the Hudson River and park benches, Marcia Butler makes us quite aware of our geographic location. I wouldn’t call the geographic and architectural details unnecessarily excessive, instead they feel intentional; in fact, the plot(s) is quite dependent on the descriptions and details of those objects, places, and buildings. This gives the novel an extra layer of sensory quality.

One of the reasons why those details feel more appropriately intentional rather than excessive is the occupations and situations of our four main characters. Karen McArdle is an interior designer and her husband, Stan McArdle, is an architect. In fact, they own and run a highly successful and exclusive design firm. Peter (Pickle) McArdle is Stan’s twin brother, and is a New York City police officer. When Karen and Stan purchased the brownstone in which they live, Pickle was supposed to move into the top floor but was left out – the main plot of the book is the drama over this situation. Just like NYC is identifiable by its structures, the identities of these characters are very much tethered to their occupations and social status.

Junie is a woman who comes into their lives at the very beginning of the book. Stan is [drunk] driving himself and Karen home, and on the George Washington Bridge they get in an accident after Stan swerves the car to avoid hitting someone in the road. That someone is Junie, who had just watched her boyfriend jump from the Bridge. Karen decides to look after the young woman, thus Junie moves into the bottom floor of the brownstone. From there, the story and characters’ histories unravel. Karen – a dedicated, hardworking woman in her professional life, is struggling with demons of her past and certain choices she’s made to get where she is in the present. Stan exhibits signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and relies on Karen way more than he cares to admit. In childhood, Pickle had always been thought of after Stan, and his discontent with his current situation isn’t spiteful, but he has held on to negative feelings about their mother. And Junie is dealing with both the unimaginable loss of her boyfriend, which has ultimately thrown her into a severe identity crisis.

There are enough conflicts in this book (plot-wise and between characters) to make your head spin, but Marcia Butler keeps the story in line and not as dizzying with her exquisite prose. Her writing is straightforward enough to be clear, but beautiful enough for it to be savored.

As lovely as the writing is, and as deep and real the story is, the ending is missing a level of satisfaction that was expected. Did I think there was going to be a happy, hopeful ending? No. But it is missing…something. Something messier? Something a little more tidy? The emptiness that came with that last page is strange, and yet I can’t seem to describe it as more than that: emptiness, but a deflated emptiness that has me shrugging at the characters’ fates rather than gasping or speculating.

Overall, this novel is an experience I’d gladly revisit. And I’m looking forward to reading more from Marcia Butler.

The setting is familiar - New York City; the characters, too - successful yuppies, money no object, living in comfort in a Brownstone and working as architects. Marcia Butler's debut focuses on the lives of Karen and Stan, as well as Pickle, Stan's twin brother, and Junie, someone who is rescued after her boyfriend commits suicide by jumping off a bridge.

From the outset, it is clear that Karen and Stan's ((alcoholic) relationship is unconventional in many ways. Karen is still having sex with Pickle, the twin, which is a link back to the past when Karen was in a relationship with him before the twins' mother coerced her into dumping Pickle and being paid a lot of money to go with Stan instead - the successful, more accomplished son, compared to Pickle the police officer. Karen runs the business; Pickle frets about life's minutiae. When they take Junie in to live in their basement, life continues as it did before, although her presence seems balance the story and the couple's relationship.

For many reasons, I found it very hard to warm to this story. The characters don't have many redeemable features and all seem a bit two-dimensional, from Karen who flits from caring for Stan to been bullied into maintaining some sort of relationship with Pickle, through to Pickle himself - a vile specimen, albeit one who is damaged and troubled, who seems to always get what he wants, sometimes inexplicably. Furthermore, the setting, although familiar, does not really feel real. Maybe this is Butler's intention - to create a bubble for these characters.

The flashbacks jar - and their inclusion seems, at times, unnecessary. Karen was privy to witnessing some abuse as a child when her father's buddies came over to drink and gamble - but such incidences do not really develop. The childhood of Stan and Pickle, and their bully of a mother, too. For me, it feels like Butler has inserted such points to create more of a backstory; however, it does not increase empathy or understanding of characters. Instead, it makes me question them more and see them as unrealistic examples of of modern New Yorkers.

Towards the end, things are resolved, to an extent; one is left thinking that Junie's baby (declared in the contrived epilogue in epistolary form to her dead boyfriend) is Stan's, perhaps following a one-night stand when Karen was sleeping with Pickle - and this would be a correct assumption. She states her marriage plans to Stan, leaving readers thinking that Karen has got together with Pickle and all four live in the Brownstone together. It just seems implausible and odd and left me feeling little indeed.

'Pickle's Progress' is a strange book. Admittedly, some of Butler's dialogue is assured but the overall plot, characterisation and structure leaves me feeling cold - and some of the early imagery is clunky and over-done. Perhaps others will enjoy this more but maybe I should have judged by the title before reading (not the cover - it's pretty stylish). Hopefully Butler's sophomore novel will be more accomplished and engaging.

Pickle’s Progress is a quintessential modern New York City novel. In it, Marcia Butler gives us identical twin brothers and the women in their lives. But it’s much more dysfunctional and convoluted than that. Fundamentally, that’s a good thing. Butler’s taut writing style connects these people to their city and adds a hearty dose of black humor.

Stan and Pickle McArdle take sibling rivalries to an skyscraper level. As twins, they’ve been compared for every second of their lives. First it was their mother, then Stan’s wife Karen. But truthfully, everyone in their orbit finds them impossible to tell apart, and yet radically different in personality. To start, Stan is an architect and Pickle is a cop. Who’s ever heard of a cop called Pickle? Wanting that answer alone drove me to read more.

In the opening pages, the three family members end up at the scene of a planned double suicide jump from the George Washington Bridge. Except only one person jumped. The other person is Junie, who unintentionally upends everyone’s life. Karen invites Junie to stay with her and Stan. The couple is also recovering from the injuries sustained when their car crashed on the bridge. Plus, they were roaring drunk, so Pickle arrives to fix the scene from a police perspective.

As the story progresses, Pickle pushes his brother and sister-in-law to honor their agreement about renovations on the brownstone they co-own. He’d like to move in, since he owns half of it. What seem like small events in the beginning are just a mask for the underlying story, which starts to become clear about midway through the novel. Then Butler starts throwing curve balls. She only stops on the last page.

My conclusions
Pickle’s Progress isn’t an epic. It isn’t filled with a large cast of characters, and its primary timeline isn’t long. At its heart are Pickle, Stan, Karen, and Junie. It’s about their relationships, pure and simple. Except when it isn’t simple, which is pretty much always.

Pickle’s Progress doesn’t break your heart into tiny pieces. But Butler pulls heartstrings just the same. And as soon as she builds sympathy for a character, she reveals something that changes your mind. Over and over.

Listening to Butler speak about the book at the 2019 Gaithersburg Book Festival, it’s clear this is a love letter to her city. She’s included some of her favorite places, some of which are iconic while others are more obscure.

Through her characters, she also shows us that relationships are like cities—there’s always a dark underbelly. The tourist spots might be bright and shiny, but head to where real people live and it’s grittier. Like traveling, we can only be tourists in another person’s relationship.

Acknowledgements
Many thanks to NetGalley, Central Avenue Publishing, and the author for the digital ARC in exchange for this honest review.

I picked up Pickle’s Progress because it had a title that caught my eye and it happened to be by wonderful memoirist Marcia Bulter. This book, pure fiction, is gritty and has a lot of dark humor in it. It’s a slice out of life with identical twins in a crazy situation.

Oddly enough, I felt this book read like a soap opera. Things happened that just didn’t seem real enough to actually happen, yet their presentation made them seem plausible. Who’s sleeping with who, abundant lies and in this case, taking in a woman that was about to commit suicide. The twin brothers, one of which is Pickle, are identical to a fault. Their mother was a whack job and yes…I’d like a book about her. What made her this way? The twin-ship leads to competition, devotion and at times disgust. The two female characters balanced out the twins while adding tension and interest.

As immersed as I was in the first three quarters of the book, the last quarter was just too fast a wrap up. The epilogue was predictably tidy. I will definitely read what Butler comes up with next as I really enjoyed her twisted sensibility with these characters.

First off, this surprised me that this was a debut novel as the writing is highly accomplished. The scene is set when Stan and his wife Karen drink-driving home from a party knock over a woman whom they take in and Stan's identical twin brother Pickle becomes enamored of. This could have be considered satire, as Stan and Karen belong to a certain class of American with very privileged lives with their architecture business, alcohol problems, dog named THE Doodles and general selfishness, however, I wouldn't really have said this is intended to be funny or to send some sort of message as satire usually does. The characters are very well drawn, but not particularly likeable, although as a reader you do come to understand why at least Karen and Pickle are the way that they are, and I didn't find Karen a stereotype, although I found Stan a bit more difficult to judge as we don't really get inside his head in the same way.

The plot is more of a conundrum, as it starts with a bang with the scene on the bridge and slows down, with Karen and Pickle reminiscing about their lives and their pasts. It becomes a more difficult read as there are not always clear distinctions between the thinking about the present and the future, and not much actually happens in the story. This is all ended in a highly unexpected way, and I'm not sure I agreed with the ending. I would like to do a seperate post just discussing it as I don't want to spoil it for people. All in all, a rather bizarre book but overall it was well written and it did make me think.

** spoiler alert ** ***I received an ARC from the publisher on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review***

The book was intriguing when it opened to the scene on the bridge and I was really looking forward to seeing what else would happen but nothing really did happen. The four main characters were Pickle and his identical twin Stan, Stan’s wife Karen and Junie, a young woman, who was almost hit by Stan and Karen as they drove home. I don’t mind unlikable characters but Pickles and Karen were terrible people. Junie was a wet blanket who didn’t really do anything. The characters did really strange things and had odd dialogue.




SPOILERS

I thought it was strange that Stan and Karen just moved Junie in with them after knowing her for 5 minutes. I also thought it unrealistic that Karen and Pickles had managed to conduct an affair under Stan’s nose for years. Surely, even with his alcohol problem, he would have suspected something at some point?

I had the persistent problem with the progress of Pickle that I encounter when reading multiple character narratives: I get a bit lost in the myriad details of the characters' proclivities and somehow simultaneously bogged down with the question of why they don't move much in their life progress.
Thus, dear reader, I wind up somewhat indifferent to these characters, meandering in their provincialism masquerading as NYC-hipness, and often found my attention wandering away to read something else or skipping ahead in chunks to see the ending. I just couldn't traverse the distances between these characters and my own perceptions, and didn't finish the book, unfortunately.

I found this book strange and disturbing but in a good way. I enjoyed the deeply flawed characters and the slow reveal of their back stories. I would be hesitant to recommend to others because of how abusive and manipulative Pickle is. I realize the other characters are also manipulative, but some of it seemed gratuitous to me and I don't know how others would respond.

Marcia Butler sinks you into this book from its first pages, as we meet the alcoholic (and clearly dysfunctional) couple Stan and Karen, who are heading home to NY–drunk, of course–from a New Jersey dinner party they did not want to attend. Stan wrecks the car when he tries to avoid Junie, a young woman whose lover has jumped off the George Washington bridge.

Enter Pickle, Stan’s identical twin brother. Pickle is a police officer, having dropped out of community college (while Stan went to college and architecture school). While the brothers look exactly alike, their mother chose Stan, the first born, as her clear favorite. When it came to maternal affection and attention, Stan received it all. He also received Karen, who was Pickle’s first, but, for various reasons, his mother wanted Stan to have her.

Stan and Karen live in a brownstone, into which they move Junie. But don’t start thinking that Marcia Butler is going all love triangle on you; it’s far more complicated than that. You have Pickle and Karen’s previous relationship, Stan and Karen’s marriage, Stan and Pickle’s brotherhood, Junie and Karen’s fledgling friendship, and a potential romantic entanglement for Junie as well (although the juicy details for that are largely relegated to the epilogue, which might have you gasp out loud).

Marcia Butler writes as if words are musical notes. (At one point, Karen plays Mahler, which is an apt comparison to how Butler weaves her prose.) This book is witty, yet crushing. Full of love, yet full of loss. A study of people, yet a study of money. A study of need, yet a study of want. Pickle’s Progress defies categorization. One thing is certain: when it’s over, you will want more Pickle. He’s a character you simply want to spend time with.

Pickle is a cop in New York City with an identical twin who is a boozy architect who is married to another boozy architect. They don’t really like each other and honestly, I didn’t care for them either in the beginning. They are self absorbed, self involved, and above all, damaged.

One night on the George Washington Bridge, the boozy architect and his wife smash their car into a guardrail when they encounter a young woman standing in the roadway. She is calling out to her boyfriend who has jumped off the bridge. This incident makes for a strange connection between the characters.

The story is well written with twists and turns that goes through the evolving or devolving relationships. Each of the characters is damaged by something in their past.
I have never read a book where I didn’t like at least one of the characters. Initially off-putting, they drew me in and held me to the end.

Thank you to #Netgalley and #Centralpublishing for approving my request. The opinions expressed in this review are solely my own.

Pickle’s Progress begins with a bang, a literal bang as Stan and Karen McArdle collide with the George Washington Bridge when startled by a young woman on the bridge. They call Stan’s brother Pickle, who conveniently for them, is a cop and practiced at getting them out of tickets. He lives nearby and is on the scene to keep his family safe from any breathalyzers. The young woman, Junie, explains that her boyfriend has just jumped to his death. Karen embraces the woman and installs her in their home as she recovers.

And so, with that bang, the four characters are introduced and three are established in the brownstone where Stan and Karne live, a brownstone that is half-owned by Pickle who is supposed to move into the upper two floors, but the renovations are constantly postponed and delayed. He is focused on getting that renovation done soon.

Stan’s injuries mean he is taking pain pills, so both he and Karen are trying sobriety – an unnatural state for both of them. Junie is depressed and lethargic and Karen and Pickle separately set themselves to getting to know her and help her get back on her feet. Stan finds her strangely calming.

The foursome continues to circle each other. We learn that their relationships are much more complicated than it appears on the surface. They also seem very unlikeable. Pickle seems most conflicted, wanting to love one woman and unable to stop loving another. Karen seems torn and Stan seems lost and befuddled.

The writing in Pickle’s Progress is sharp and witty. There are moments of truly incisive commentary, particularly from Pickle. However, some of their actions are inexplicable and when we learn the reasons behind their actions, they feel more like excuses than reasons. It’s true that over time I came to care a little more about them, but still found them unappealing. Much of what I dislike about the book is tied up in the denouement where Karen’s motives are revealed and there we are looking at a grand mess. Then, to make it worse, the epilogue that takes us three years into the future when Junie writes a letter showing how some of the mess was cleaned up without the story of how that happened. That story would have been more interesting.

Pickle’s Progress will be released on April 9th. I received a copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Pickle’s Progress at Central Avenue Publishing
Marcia Butler author site

Ugh, so many unlikeable characters with ridiculous problems, issues and weird behavior. When I started the book I thought it had promise I just had no idea that the promise was going to be complete disbelief of what was going on. The dialog, the actions, the situations, everything was out of whack and strange, strange, strange. For all who choose to try this book fair warning, suspend belief in rational behavior.

I received an advance copy from Netgalley and Central Avenue Publishing.

Linda’s Book Obsession Reviews “Pickles’s Progress” by Marcia Butler, Central Avenue Publishing, April 9, 2019

Marcia Butler, Author of “Pickle’s Progress” has written an unusual, unique perspective about life and love. The Genres of “Pickle’s Progress” are Fiction, Women’s Fiction, Dry Wit, and some Satire. The story takes place mostly in the New York and surrounding areas. The author describes the four characters as complicated, complex, unlikable at times, dysfunctional, quirky, and strange. My favorite character is the dog.(the fifth character if that counts)

The characters are two identical twin brothers, Pickles and Stan and Stan’s wife and a young woman who has had a tragic loss. Stan and his wife are living in their part of a Brownstone house, that they purchased with Pickles. The grieving woman is living in Stan’s finished basement. Pickles want to have his part of the house finished so he can move in. The interaction between all of the characters is almost like a game of chess in certain ways. There are betrayals, unpredictable actions, and a twisted plot.

The ending is a big surprise! I appreciate that Marcia Butler has written a thought-provoking unique story about love and life . I would recommend this book for those readers who enjoy an unusual novel that leaves you thinking.