Glassworks

March 20, 2023
Wolfgang-Smith contends with vocation, identity, and the meaning of family in her appealing debut. The first of four sections takes place in 1910 Boston, where heiress Agnes Carter marries an unscrupulous and abusive man and becomes enamored of a brilliant but volatile sculptor named Ignace Novak, whom she’s hired to produce glass models of flora and fauna. In 1938, Agnes’s son, Edward, longs to pursue a religious career, but lacks the required theological background, then stumbles into a career making liturgical stained glass. In the 1980s, Edward’s gender fluid offspring, Novak, works as a window cleaner in New York City. After Novak is dragged reluctantly to a Broadway performance, Novak becomes besotted with Cecily, a captivating, gender-bending swing performer. The novel’s final section, set in 2015, focuses on Cecily’s daughter, known as “Flip,” who lives miserably in the closet-size spare room of her ex-girlfriend’s apartment because she can’t afford to move out. Flip works at a start-up that creates glass paperweights out of cremains, where a co-worker encourages her to look into her mysterious given name—Novak—and the glass bee heirloom she once thought was just a trinket. As the various threads tie together, the author makes clever use of her central metaphor, considering glass as sharp, fluid, changeable, and even surprising—much like the characters she depicts. This is a radiant exploration of a complex legacy. Agent: Danielle Bukowski, Sterling Lord Literistic.

Starred review from April 15, 2023
Olivia Wolfgang-Smith's first novel is a generation-spanning epic of family, inheritance, and identity. In Boston in 1910, woman of means Agnes Carter brings Czech glass artist Ignace Novak to create botanical and zoological models for ""the university"" (Harvard). Agnes' and Ignace's shared passion for the natural world sustains Agnes as she struggles against the limits imposed by her new and violent marriage. In 1938, Edward Novak leaves his parents in Chicago to apprentice at a glass workshop in Boston. After constant failures, he finds hope in Charlotte Callaghan, heir to a communion wafer company. In 1986, queer window washer Novak cares for her father and her community in New York. Her best friend, Felix, drags her to a Broadway show, where Novak's life collides with that of young actress Cecily Wonder. Novak Brightman, who goes by Flip, struggles to stay afloat in 2015, while her twin sister, Tabitha, manages their aging mother's care. Stuck living with her ex-girlfriend, Flip sees only her broken relationships and failures. These intertwined stories explore isolation and connection. With richly drawn characters and deft storytelling, Glassworks is a beautifully crafted, memorable debut.

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Starred review from April 1, 2023
This sophisticated debut from Wolfgang-Smith traces an evolving emotional legacy through four generations of a family while examining the basic question of "how to love something without letting it have everything." Glass--sometimes transparent, sometimes opaque, both sturdy and fragile--serves as the novel's primary metaphor while anchoring its plot. Characters sometimes see each other with joyous clarity but often with distortions or not at all. In 1910, Boston socialite Agnes Carter renounces wealth and respectability (and perhaps her moral compass) for glass blower Ignace Novak, drawn to his talent, passion, and lucidity. The glass bee he gives Agnes will thread its way through the novel, a small detail of growing resonance, a lovely merging of image, theme, and plot. In 1938, Edward Novak knows nothing of his parents' past. Stung more by their disinterest than their disappointment in him, the 18-year-old leaves their Chicago home to apprentice at a stained-glass studio in "their least favorite city," Boston. He fails at stained glass but finds love, unaware that his sympathetic girlfriend, a rebellious daughter desperate to escape her wealthy, overbearing family, offers a skewed mirror of his indifferent mother. With AIDS as the backdrop in 1986 New York, the failed attempts of high-rise window washer Novak (given name Pamela, but known just as Novak) and her disabled father, Ed, to understand each other's affection are heart-rending. At 47, wary loner Novak becomes unexpectedly captivated--"not lust but recognition," she explains--by Cecily, a young actress whose commitment to her art form offers another off-kilter mirroring, this time of equally obsessive if more gifted Ignace. Novak's misguided effort to reunite Cecily with her parents ends disastrously. Almost 30 years later, Cecily's daughter, Flip, working for a company incorporating cremains into small glass sculptures, feels unloved and bullied by her family, a co-worker, and an ex-lover until she begins to understand that "people didn't know things unless you told them." Wolfgang-Smith writes like a glass blower, patiently building and enhancing to create durable beauty. Simply put, this is a wonderful, wonderful book.

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