‘The Modern’ was an exploration of bisexuality, relationships snd struggling to define your career and self in your early 20s. I enjoyed the ponderings on art and love and it made me wish I, who knows nothing about art, had an internship at MoMA in New York City. It just seems so glamorous and sad all at the same time! Perfect fodder for a sad girl book.

Modern Women? Marriages? Relationships? Careers? Art? Anna Kate Blair says all of the above.

I'm drawn to books that capture the Australian experience. Though, Sophia, an Australian who relocated to New York to work at MoMA, maintains a tenuous connection to her past. Her girl-next-door plainness accentuates her authenticity, making her interesting in the way ordinary people can be.

The art references, particularly those related to Grace Hartigan, offer an artistic frame through which Sophia filters her own life, navigating its complexities as a young queer woman, albeit a privileged white one.

The book held my attention. I loved the exploration of multiple perspectives, and I couldn't predict its direction. A thought-provoking read, especially for those approaching 30.

I had very mixed feelings about this book. It has a great premise, but I wanted to punch the main character in the face. She was just so vacillating and passive. The issue is that we spend the whole book inside the main character's head, and she's more frustrating than interesting. She is trying to get another contract at MoMA, but she only talks about what a terrible place it is to work, she is sad because no-one realises she's bisexual (because she has been dating the same man since she was 24, six years before this book starts) , she is engaged to a man who is off hiking and has so little personality that she (and I) doesn't think about him when he is not present. She thinks a lot about modern art, which I don't care about at all. I thought about Googling the artists that she uses to pad out the story (or as analogies, to be kind) and then I realised I just didn't care. She had a crush on a girl called Emily, at least 6 years before this book is set. And she goes on and on and on about it. She's like that friend we all have, that we catch up for a drink every month or two and find ourselves both bored and drained afterwards. And yet we maintain the friendship - which is another way of saying that I was very frustrated with this novel, and also quite involved with Sophia and her frustrating life. In the end there is a desperate grasp for growth and self-awareness, but I didn't believe that for a second. Drift on Sophia.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free e-Arc in exchange for an honest review.

'I wondered if these strange, sudden obsessions were called crushes because, as with berries underfoot, a skin might break, rupturing the boundaries between one life and another. It felt risky to desire, as if compartments inside me were vanishing, oozing, overheating with the charge of adrenalin.'

In The Modern Anna Kate Blair delivers an intelligent and engaging exploration of the self in relation to commitment, desire, sexuality, gender, art, and the concept of belonging.

With an affectionate insight into New York and its museums, the book serves as both an evaluative ode to the city and a thought-provoking art history lesson. Wrapped within this is a quietly crushing novel of falling in and out of love - romantic, platonic, and professional - and its profound impacts on our own sense of identity.

Blair's writing exhibits a remarkable blend of intellect and charm, captivating you with her carefully crafted prose and depth of thought. It's been quite some time since I've underlined passages in a book, but I felt the need to record some of Blair's stunning sentences to revisit in the future.

After relishing this debut, I'm eagerly awaiting Anna Kate Blair's next work.

----------

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster (Australia) for the ARC in return for an honest review.

I expected to love this book. It’s about art, New York and a young woman forging a career at MoMA, the legendary Manhattan institution promoting the most innovative and provocative forms of modern and contemporary art. Described as “a brilliantly wry and insightful debut about art, sexuality, commitment and whether being on the right path can lead to the wrong place”, it’s a book that holds lots of promise for the reader.

Unfortunately, in my case, that promise wasn’t fulfilled. A large part of the reason was the character of the protagonist, Sophia. A young woman alone at a time of uncertainty about her career and her relationships, she’s questioning her purpose, her future and her past, but obsessively and with no clue as to her own motivations. This endless ruminating becomes exasperating to the reader. She’s a completely passive character, she lets things happen to her without any awareness of what they mean. For example, her boyfriend proposes and she immediately accepts unthinkingly, then spends the rest of the book vacillating about her boyfriend, her engagement and the institution of marriage itself. She tells herself she “wanted to have chosen it [marriage], rather than to have woken up one morning and found myself engaged … unsure of the precise machinations through which I had entered this state, unable to trace the contours.”

Writing about solitary characters who engage in relentlessly dissecting their thoughts and actions can be a recipe for a flat and tedious narrative. It can only work if the character is relatable, generates empathy and by the end of the book reaches a stage of resolution, enlightenment or deeper understanding, which didn’t happen here.

In a way it’s an I Heart New York in book form, interspersed with insider perspectives about the world of art museums and those who work there, but that’s not enough, enjoyable though it is, to sustain a novel. In some ways it reminded me of “My Salinger Year” by Joanna Rakoff but lacking in the charm and vivid characterisation of that book.

It may be that I’m the wrong generation to fully appreciate a book about twenty and thirty-year old “moderns” and others may find it much more relatable.

I’m grateful to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for allowing me to read an advance review copy of the book.