I love when the title of the book is drawn from something referenced in the text, but even more when that same title carries multiple meanings—in this case the scaffolding referenced was both a physical presence as well as a narrative framework for the story. That being said, I don't think I enjoyed the historical perspective nearly as much as I enjoyed the contemporary portions of this story—there was some historically accurate sexism present that I didn't particularly enjoy, and I also felt like jumping between the perspectives of husband and wife was harder to follow than the consistent perspective of Anna in the more modern timeline. I also felt like I got more value from the art installations done all over Paris that were referenced as being part of Clementine's work—the fact that these were real outside of the story helped ground the whole concept.

I think this story would be a good fit for readers of Intimacies, by Katie Kitamura, or Writers & Lovers, by Lily King. The explorations of desire, romantic relationships and parenthood extend far beyond the boundaries of the text.

Thank you to FSG for the opportunity to read and review!

Look, I love a cerebral reading experience. I love my brain being pushed and expanded and I LOVE smart women talking about smart women things. Relationships! Desire! Art! Activism! Culture!

So when Lauren Elkin went ahead and put all of that in a novel set in Paris, I knew this was a book tailor made for me. I also like a good conceit - in this case the book is broadly about two couples who live in the same apartment, but 50 years apart.

In 1972, Florence and Henry are redoing the kitchen, trying to get pregnant and not being at all honest about how they’re each feeling about…well, anything. Meanwhile in 2019, Anna is a psychoanalyst trying to process a recent miscarriage alone in Paris while her husband David is working mostly from London. They’re also decidedly lacking in that whole talking honest thing. They’re all dealing with ideas around sexual monogamy, emotional fidelity and understanding the people around them, and these are topics RIPE for drama and intrigue.

Not that this is melodramatic at all. Rather, it’s asking intelligent questions and leaving clues about the connections between characters that are slowly revealed throughout the book. It’s deftly done, and although these are big themes the book doesn’t feel heavy at all. The parallels are purposeful, as is the setting - this one apartment, this one building in an area of Paris that used to be more culturally bohemian before gentrification changed its identity.

It’s quite an interior book, which means the characters have to be interesting, or at least have interesting thoughts. Thankfully, they do - moreover, the two women feel entirely relatable in what they’re trying to work out about themselves and the world around them. In some ways they evolve, in other ways they don’t: this is true in life, I think, and felt necessarily true in the book. And I should say: cerebral doesn’t necessarily mean difficult. This is entirely readable, but I think you’ll come away having been immersed in lots of interesting ideas.

It’s an ambitious debut novel for sure! But I think she pulls it off. And the cover? 10/10, no notes. Have you read it? Come recommend me some more books set in Paris please!

How can I put this gently... this was a devastating disappointment. This had a five-star feeling from the very first page. I was highlighting incessantly through Part 1 due to Anna being so relatable. Part 2 is where everything fell apart. All of this buildup gets cut off abruptly, sending us fifty years into the past with new characters, which wouldn't be a problem if it didn't give me such whiplash. I was scrambling to even understand these characters and just as I got used to them, Part 3... back to the original narrative. Except this time, Anna is insufferable and convoluted, the writing nothing like the first third of the novel. I tried so hard to see it as a whole, but couldn't love it. It was too disjointed and the plot nonexistent. Overall my most disappointing read of 2024.

I appreciate the publisher for sending me the eARC, however, I must say my copy, when sent to kindle, was unreadable due poor formatting. Unfortunately, I could not download the original file. Full review to come as I got another copy.

I’ll preface this review by saying that the subject of this novel did not interest me at all, but I love Lauren Elkin’s writing so much that I decided to try it anyway.

The result was that I found this more good than likable. I loved Elkin’s Flâneuse and have also enjoyed many of her essays, and this book does satisfy the craving to read her beautiful writing, even if it never got me interested in the bones of the story.

This is largely a portrait of two troubled marriages, something that holds no interest for me, and if that’s your type of thing you’ll probably enjoy this one, rather than feeling merely appreciative of it, which was mostly what I came away with.

Elkin has a way with words that has successfully translated into fiction, even if I didn’t love her choice of topic. In addition to the writing itself, I also loved how Elkin’s tremendous talent for evoking a strong sense of place came through here. It’s an intriguing and wonderful portrait of Paris, and probably worth reading for that alone.

This book checked a number of boxes while also leaving pretty cold. I might have enjoyed this more had I not just read the essay "More is More" from Becca Rothfeld's collection All Things are Too Small, in which she points to a trend of contemporary fiction guided by "an accumulation of negations." I wanted to feel a more warm-blooded response to this, but I found it ultimately sort of empty and on-trend.

I did not enjoy this book; it is a kind of writing and world setting that takes an ordinary life and tries to elevate it to intellectualism/hushed self importance. feels a bit like those early 90s movies where a certain kind of life and its pains and troubles are aestheticised. also dislike how the here and now is made into a narrative ambience.

unfortunately, i became really busy as soon as i was given access to this book and was sadly unable to finish it. however, what i managed to read drew me in immediately and made me want to keep reading. it was interesting, melancholic, and thoughtful. i will be trying to pick this back up in the future so that i can finish it.

thank you netgalley and the publishers for the arc :)

ALWAYS AN PRESURE TO READ A THRILLER - ALTHOUGH NOT THE BEST WAS KINDA PREDICTABL;E BUT WAS A FUN READ AND SHALL RECOMMEN

2.5 months ain’t bad given my track record

thanks fsg and netgalley! i’ll try to be nice even though i feel negatively!

scaffolding follows main character anna and she reels from a recent miscarriage. her husband david is working in london while she remains in france, giving her time to befriend the younger and more politically radical clementine. the narrative later flashes back to the 1970s where couple florence and henry and living in the same apartment, dealing with the same issues of marriage and parenthood (or lack thereof).

i really enjoyed the first part of this novel. i liked anna's exploration of grief over her miscarriage, especially as she was forced to navigate it alone with david being away. i thought lauren elkin excellently explored her inner turmoil and posed many interesting questions.

however, the time jump made no sense to me. it totally reset the momentum of the story, and i simply did not care to keep reading (hence the 2.5 months of it all). i was annoyed by both henry and florence, and i was struggling to find meaning in their woes. i just kept asking...why can't we communicate??

moving back to anna's timeline, i was disappointed to learn that the interest i had at the start of the novel was completely gone. i found it a slog to get through the rest of the book, mostly because the characters lost appeal. i wish i could resonate with them more or find something to hold on to, but their self-destructive behavior ultimately became more irritating than anything else.

unfortunately, this book is really just about cheating, which, given the psychoanalysis i was promised, i found unfortunately underwhelming. i actually don't care why people cheat on their partners, sue me!

i was going through my highlights to try to find what i was connecting with while i read, and unfortunately i didn't have much to show for it. but i did find this one line that made me lol: "all I do with my days, it seems, is drink water, piss, and refill the fucking brita" so true girlie

for some people this may work, but i am simply not one of those people!

Scaffolding is a novel about the layers of life, being picked at as though they are bits of peeling wallpaper in a kitchen. Revealing the paper's underside is a slow task and one that doesn't necessarily have any one clear and easy path or finish line. This is the pace of Scaffolding. I found Lauren Elkin's novel to be a thoughtful exploration of what it means to want; be it children, love, friendship, adoration, meaning, or even sourdough bread. Elkin's use of psychoanalysis was a brilliant writing device and it had me, the non-psychoanalysis-trained reader, beginning to read into any disclosure made to the reader by characters either directly or indirectly. The troubles with miscarriage picked at my heart a little, but only insofar as the descriptions were so realistic. This novel works to share the lives of two separate women living in an apartment with decades between their stories. I found my mind kept returning to the first couple, Anna and David as the story moved on to the 70s timeline but it's alright for a reader to pick favourites. Anna's character was complex and rich. I appreciated this novel immensely. Thank you for the opportunity to read this. I will not forget Scaffolding anytime soon.

SCAFFOLDING is a beautiful book, light on plot but with absolutely gorgeous writing that envelopes you immediately. Set in France, the book is mostly sent in an apartment in Paris, with parts 1 and 3 about a woman in 2019 navigating life after a miscarriage with her husband working during the week in London, and part 2 in t1972 about a couple navigating infidelity, having children, and intellectual thought. Political upheaval, feminism, and marital issues are all backdrop themes of this somewhat simple story on the surface.

I just really needed this calming, lovely book. It's sad at parts, and big CW for cheating, but I liked the characters and the setting enough to give this a solid 4 stars. I wish the ending gave us a little more about what happens next though, my only complaint. I don't want to give much else away because I also enjoyed the surprised Elkin deftly unfolds.

Something about the writing in this one just didn't click with me. It seemed very oblique and meandering in a way that made it hard for me to connect with the story and the characters. A pity because this one really did seem like it was going to be a potential favourite.

*Scaffolding*, the debut novel by Lauren Elkin, is a beautifully layered exploration of love, identity, and memory set against the evocative backdrop of Paris. Set in the same Belleville apartment but split between two timelines—2019 and 1972—the story follows two couples confronting parallel struggles with fidelity, marriage, and the desire for children amid waves of political and social change.

In 2019, Anna, a psychoanalyst grappling with a recent miscarriage, befriends a young, radical feminist neighbor named Clémentine as she tries to rebuild her life. In 1972, Florence, a psychology student attending Jacques Lacan’s seminar, is working to conceive a child with her husband, Henry, who harbors doubts about fatherhood.

Elkin skillfully weaves together the lives of these two women across time, exploring how personal spaces hold our histories and memories, bridging past and present. With a narrative that feels as intimate as it is cinematic, *Scaffolding* offers a poignant meditation on the lingering effects of love, loss, and the enduring connections we forge with others and with the places we call home.

This character-driven novel follows a woman recovering from a miscarriage and reexamining her marriage and relationships. Short vignettes make it a buoyant read, carrying you through the story at a good pace.

Part of the reason I picked up this novel is because it mentioned a connection to another couple that lives in the main character's apartment, but many years before. I love a time jump, especially when people are related by the place they inhabit. However, I felt let down by this section. It appears randomly in the middle of the novel for a comparatively short number of pages, and I found it jarring and unnecessary.

Besides the basic similarities between the stories, I wasn't convinced of the relevance of the time-jump or what purpose it served in enhancing either narrative.
Even so, I found the contemporary narrative really engaging. I loved picking apart the intricacies of the main character's relationships along with her and wondering what she would decide to do next. Her mind was always busy, and whirs from one observation to the next at a fast clip.

This novel is deeply philosophical, questioning desire and how it manitests in difterent relationships. I'm not the biggest philosophy fan- often find it hard to understand, but Elkin writes about it in a way that feels engaging yet full of depth and wonder. It felt really refreshing, and I think it helped for me to wonder at these concepts within the confines of a narrative structure.

A thoughtful story about marriage, relationships, our responsibility to one another, desire, and breaking apart the boxes we for ourselves into. It feels meditative, yet brisk, and always captivating.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for providing me with an advance e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. Look for it in your local and online bookstores and libraries on September 17, 2024.

Pensive and philosophical in its very French way, Scaffolding reads like a long walk in the park. It's soft in certain places, ebbing and flowing between matters such as sexuality and desire and infidelity (practically multiples of one another), all the while being invariably meditative in its explorations. Although the plot is rather light, I found that its lack actually illuminated the characters of interest and allowed their depth and complexity to feel more material. The book's most consistent and delightful quality is how grounded it is in its location imagery — for a story so central to both the city and the Parisian apartment, the writing feels like an invitation to stay.

Gorgeous novel that does a fun thing I love of establishing two time periods in the same setting, and then bouncing the time back and forth in the last part of the book. You've got two couples in a small village in France dealing with the looming possibility of parenthood and how each person reacts to it, and how they unknowingly interact with the aftermath of each other's interactions. Lyrical, goregous fall read.

thank you netgalley for the e-arc in exchange for my honest review. what gorgeous and fresh style of writing, elkin is so skilled at writing. i thought the stories were about themes and situations that you don't read about/hear about in mainstream publishing and it was really nice to read something new to me.

beautiful, allusive writing - good character descriptions - sensual and engaging - I suppose, very much one world - rich people (despite being bohemian) playing with each other's faithfulness and. relationships - all ends well, I suppose - after a miscarriage unhinges our psychiatrist narrator she relives an earlier relationship with husband of a woman she meets by accident (who is bisexual) - and while her own husband is way at work, she rebuilds their flat, reassesses her life, and opts to return to her husband - last we hear, she's working again as an analyst and has a baby. so gritty only in parts but beautiful anyway. i love Elkin's works on Paris and this is another one, really - the city is set out wonderfully..