Apr 6

Apr 6 Take What You Need

Author: Idra Novey
Publisher: Viking
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

In her most powerful book yet, award-winning writer Idra Novey has conjured a novel of "astonishing and singular" honesty (Rumaan Alam) with two determined, unforgettable female voices.

Set in the Allegheny Mountains of Appalachia, Take What You Need tracks the aftermath of a long estrangement between a stepmother and daughter. Leah is a web editor and young mother who's sought an urban life and clean break from her rural childhood. But with her stepmother Jean's death, Leah must return to sort through what's been left behind.

What Leah discovers is astonishing: Jean has filled the house with giant sculptures she's welded from scraps of the area's industrial history. There's also a young man now living in the house who's played an unknown role in Jean's last years and in her art.

With great verve and humor, Idra Novey zeroes in on the joys and difficulty of family, the ease with which we let distance mute conflict, and the power we can draw from creative pursuits.

Passionate and resonant, Take What You Need explores the continuing mystery of the people we love most, and what can be built from what others have discarded--art, unexpected friendship, a new contentment of self. This is Idra Novey at her very best.

TL;DR Review

Take What You Need is a quick but heartbreaking read about an estranged stepmother and stepdaughter with geographic, class, and political divides. The character and conflict work is just incredible.

For you if: You live for a really excellent character-driven novel.

Full Review

I received a gifted copy of this book from Viking and was immediately struck by the powerhouse roundup of jacket blurbs. (Garth Greenwell, Rumaan Alam, Angie Cruz, Cathy Park Hong, Raven Leilani, more!!) I don’t know how it’s STILL managed to fly so far under the radar, but I need more of you to read it right now, please.

The narrative is told in the dual POVs of Jean, a bull-headed senior woman living alone and welding giant sculptures in the Allegheny Mountains; and Leah, who spent a few key formative years of her childhood as Jean’s stepdaughter. They’re estranged and haven’t spoken in years when Leah gets a call that Jean has died and left her sculptures to her. We see the key moments of Jean’s last few years (including her interactions with a teenage boy who lived next door), and a combination of flashbacks and her present-day trip to see the sculptures from Leah. That’s all I’ll say on the plot.

The book isn’t very long, and I read it in one sitting. And yet still, it really snuck up on me. This is one of those litfic books that’s excellent in a quieter way, with just plain really good fiction craft. The characters here — especially Jean — are so vivid and humanly flawed that it cracks your heart in two. They have complicated, realistic relationships and conflicts where everyone is both in the right and the wrong at the same time. It follows themes of regret, pride, love, motherhood, real art being something you do, and generational / geographical / class / political divides between people who love one another.

This is prize-worthy stuff, and I hope this book gets enough acclaim to be nominated for some good ones (maybe the National Book Award?). Jean, in particular, is going to stay with me for a long time. Please read it!