The unnamed woman is sooo interesting. This book is truly unlike any I have ever read and so enjoyable. Strange but enjoyable.

I’m judging the L.A. Times 2020 and 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

“He looked unregulated and liable to weep yet also orderly, a wardrobe out of whose stuffed shelves coats and pillows would tumble if you opened the door without care.”-5 swift alert prose

The Weak Spot by Lucie Elven may trip up the reader expecting a straightforward novel about a young woman with no connection to her past .beginning her career in a new city. It is that. It is not realistic or reminiscent of other "coming of age" novels you know. Consider it a dream that IS realistic. When we dream we accept what comes and only later make note of meaning and connections to daily reality. This is a short book which could and probably should be read in a gulp to achieve that effect.

One simple declarative sentence after another, each more surprising than the last, makes this novel a delightfully propulsive read. Elven’s writing reminds me of the surrealist master Leonora Carrington who also had the rare talent of writing sentences that kept in going in ever more surprising directions. This novel didn’t just make me laugh with surprise at where the sentences were taking me. I actually snorted now and then. In a good way.

I don’t think the book description does justice to the eerie fun that this book provides its reader. What an unexpected pleasure.

<I> When I had rushed to the town and moved into the empty house, I bought chairs on the internet, surprised by their quick shipping and apparent value for the money. When they arrived they turned out to be made for a dollhouse, no more than a thumb high. I returned them with apologies and compliments to their maker, but not before I had arranged them in each of the empty rooms, by the kitchen table, at the food of my bed, next to the bathroom sink, to see them dwarfed by the surroundings. I found this very funny and had to sit down on the side of the tub. In the mirror I could see telltale silver hairs, somehow longer than the others, streaking my crown. It occurred to me that there was something comforting about the obviously dangerous Mr. Malone to someone like me who worried all the time....</I>

Just great fun and a delight to read.

Have you ever read a book that revels in its uncertainty? The Weak Spot unfolds like the feeling of waking suddenly from a dream. The dream story still lays atop reality in an unsettling balance.

The narrator of this story is not only unnamed but also ungendered. Therefore, I’m using they/their pronouns throughout this review.

A young person finishes their pharmacy school education. Now they must apprentice under a licensed pharmacist to become licensed themselves. They choose a pharmacy in a small remote mountain town. The licensed pharmacist is named August Malone. The townspeople are both in awe and fear him. He torments and disparages his staff constantly. His apprentice quickly internalizes his criticisms and soon copies his unique therapeutic style with the pharmacy’s customers. Eventually, the apprentice begins to fear what may be occurring behind the town’s quiet facade.

The Weak Spot is a fable without a morale. It’s more about feelings than rational thoughts. It does a good job of getting the reader out of their own head and into someone else’s. But the ambiguity may put off some readers used to a more defined plot or characters. For me, it was an intriguing ramble into someone else’s thought processes. But I was equally happy to return to my own, much less complicated and hazy, head after the end. 3.5 stars rounded up to 4 stars!

Thanks to Soft Skull Press and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

While debut novel The Weak Spot by Lucie Elven sounded like it would be an intriguing read with a simple cover that drew me in, I was disappointed with the whole thing.
Elven's choice to keep so much unnamed or vague - such as the unnamed narrator herself, the location/setting of the story, and the time period - seems to have backfired and instead of creating a timeless story it created one that I could not connect to. Half way through the novel I was still waiting for the story to take off, or for anything interesting to happen, but ultimately I felt like it went nowhere.
Elven's prose was interesting, and again, the premise of a mysterious pharmacist protagonist had so much potential, but in the end it failed to get me invested in the story.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

I'm at a loss to adequately describe this short novel about a young - unnamed- woman serving an apprenticeship of sorts to a pharmacist in a European village reachable only by a funicular. She relates what she's told by the customers who are all just a tad askew. There's a sense of menace based on tales about the region but what will happen? Not much, actually. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. It's unusual and others might find more meaning in it than I did. For fans of literary fiction.

𝑨𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒏𝒅 𝒐𝒇 𝒎𝒚 𝒔𝒕𝒖𝒅𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝒉𝒂𝒅 𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒅 𝒐𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒄𝒆𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒊𝒏. 𝑰 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒆𝒆 𝒊𝒇 𝑰 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒎𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒖𝒓𝒆 𝒖𝒑 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒏𝒆𝒔𝒔. 𝑵𝒐 𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒉𝒂𝒅 𝒒𝒖𝒊𝒕𝒆 𝒔𝒂𝒊𝒅 𝑰 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅𝒏’𝒕, 𝒔𝒐 𝑰 𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒍𝒊𝒆𝒅.

Sometimes you read a book that is both hazy and clear, this is such a novel. The narrator of The Weak Spot has come to an unnamed town on a mountain in Europe to apprentice with a pharmacist. A town that serves as a safe haven, she recalls from her youth, for all unsavory sorts of people. August Malone is the pharmacist who hires her and upon her first interview with him it’s evident he is a contradiction, someone who is on guard, behaving strangely as the observed often do. Interesting for a man who is king observer himself! Malone’s belief is a pharmacist’s purpose is to ‘enhance the locals’ potential by listening carefully’. It becomes her job to do as much, as she passes her time alongside Elsa who tends to the dispensing station. Elsa relies on her to confront the things she wishes to change about the pharmacy, as Malone can be intimidating. Elsa has a terminally ill sister named Nelly, whose garden she covets, herself having been left with only a small patch of grass that the sun apparently shuns. Mr. Funicular, is a costume designer, costumes being the only thing he is ambitious about, a superstitious fellow who tells stories about a beast the long ago wreaked havoc until the village dealt with the creature.

Mr. Funicular’s grotesque to ward off beasts reminds her of her mother and her illness, alternative remedies and death. As time passes she hopes to be trusted by the locals, accepted. Malone is a person whom one cannot catch, whose productivity she admires. Their job is to comfort, to give people something to hold unto in their words that heal body and soul of whatever plagues them. Malone eventually takes a sort of ‘sabbatical’, once he has decided to go into politics running for Mayor and what better way to use his skills learned behind the counter listening and learning about the locals needs, desires. Politicians must understand everything about their people.

Our narrator herself learns about performance, giving the customers what they have come for by presenting a sort of confidence. By asking the right questions to get the people to talk and reflecting back at them the pharmacy becomes the perfect place to disappear and feel nothing. At home, she does much them same, refusing to invest herself in music nor art, anything that makes her feel. She says as much, that she seems to be living in a long pause. Either I missed something or she is meant to remain as elusive as the rest of the happenings in this strange village. Reading this story felt more like I had walked into someone else’s dream, and was attempting to understand the symbolism and failing miserably but I delighted in the play between customers and our narrator, their struggle between wanting to believe medicine has answers and disbelieving at the same time. Something is just completely strange about the entire place and it’s people, intimidated by Malone. It’s an odd novel, but the writing was sometimes lovely. I know there are mysteries, weird things happening beneath the surface and we’re scratching to get to the meaty worms but I never felt I captured them. I’m still at a loss for what it’s about beyond the narrator wishing to just forget herself entirely by turning attention to other people.

Publication Date: February 9, 2021

Soft Skull Press

I found the unnerving tension that builds in the background of this short fable-adjacent book incredibly compelling. There is a strangeness to this book which, although they differ wildly in plot, brings to mind the Memory Police or Fever Dream— suspenseful stories of visiting a place cut off from reality. In The Weak Spot, it’s a tiny town atop a mountain with a secluded square housing a pharmacy and little else, and where the narrator is working before being certified as a pharmacist. She meets under Mr Malone, who runs the shop and has an immediate disliking to her, her co-worker Elsa, who harbours a family resentment over a garden plot, and the other townsfolk. The pharmacy operates in a slightly unorthodox manner, something not dissimilar to talk therapy and as she hears more of the townsfolks’ problems, the narrator becomes increasingly caught up in their lives. As Malone’s nefarious character is revealed in a few small but arresting anecdotes and he plans a mayoral run, the narrator fears the power he holds over the townsfolk and their secrets. At the same time, she becomes directly implicated in his campaign, taking over duties from a troubled employee who abruptly leaves town. As she struggles to maintain boundaries between herself and her employer, the narrator hardens slightly in her mannerisms before realizing what it is she really feels and acting in accordance with her inner state. At times it is difficult to grasp the severity of what is really at stake; this may be due in part to the narrator’s careful detachment, the archetypal positioning of certain characters, or my own failure in fully conveying the strange, disquieting mood that the book inhabits.

The pharmacy was somewhere in Europe in a part of the country "that deviants run away to in books, a place for murders, thieves...a landscape full of abrupt drops, deep craters...I wanted to see if I could measure up to this wildness...so I applied..." to be a pharmacist's apprentice. After completing a two-month mentorship with Mr. Malone and being approved by the pharmaceutical board, I would be a full fledged pharmacist. Local legend described this isolated town as "The Land of the Beast"- an extraordinary beast in the mountains was said to have eaten girls alive in days of old. "By all rights, I shouldn't have inserted myself into this close-knit mountain town...", only accessible by funicular. Why this town? Why this pharmacy?

To the dwindling populace, Pharmacist Malone conveyed the image of a frugal, refined, hard working but authoritarian, fifty year old gentleman. He often positioned himself on a stool behind our unnamed narrator, and listened as she tried to master his method of serving the townspeople.
"[Mr. Malone] believed that a pharmacist's role was to enhance the locals' potential by listening carefully...to experience customers' needs more urgently and their disappointments more keenly than [one's] own." "All our talking was not part of any sales strategy...the customers came in one by one and disclosed, as if at confession, and usually left without spending a cent." Soon Mr. Malone "appeared to have delegated his whole job to me...his mentorship would be of the more oblique, unscientific kind...". Why? Mr. Malone stated his political aspirations-to be mayor of the town.

"I tried to embody a youthful energy...often sacrificed safety or comfort for the sense that [I was] giving or saving...[but] the more abstinent I seemed, the more [the customers] talked. I was distracted by daydreams...I fantasized about being a mannequin". As manipulative Mr. Malone campaigned for mayor and the atmosphere became more sinister, our narrator emerged from her fog and began to "think and feel" for herself.


The Weak Spot" by debut author Lucie Elven introduces the reader to the cast of residents in the remote town. The unconventional characters included a historian, a gossipy market seller, an opinionated accountant, and a funicular driver. Mr. Malone's political game created "an aura of crisis" in creepy, fable-like fashion in this unpredictable novel. An excellent read, however, it might not be everyone's cup of tea.

Thank you Soft Skull Press and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I might have been too tired, stressed and/or distracted to properly appreciate The Weak Spot. Odd things stood out and confused me, like how was Elsa able to pin a doll to the front of the counter? Is that a translation error? I wasn't sure where this story took place, figured not America because of the funicular. Which was weirdly reinforced by the character being named Mr. Funicular. I kept waiting for an explanation to where this takes place, who the main character is, what the beast is, why Mr Malone the pharmacist is so manipulative, what is the story behind the narrator's family situation, but got answers to nothing. Which is fine, I like the way Lucie Elven writes, and I enjoyed reading about the mysterious narrator and her mysterious job at the mysterious pharmacy. But then as I read the blurb about this book on Goodreads just now, I was stunned at how little of that I'd come to realize on my own.

An interesting fable of a novel. With some intriguing things to say about the modern need for facts and science and answers.

This is a book that wants to be a Wes Anderson movie, but lacks the awkward fleeting charm of even the bad ones. It tries very hard to be quirky and sinister and odd and beguiling, but it's just rather dull. The characters are flat and uninteresting, and their woes and observations are mundane; everyone kind of slumps around flaccidly.

This book is well written and has good character development I just couldn’t personally get into the story and found it a little bit of a struggle to keep reading. In the end it does wrap up everything and answers the questions you have, just left a little lacking for me personally. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.