The Phoebe Variations
Plenty of Phoebe’s wry meditations on adolescence, motherhood, music and art are incisive and wise — above all, her puzzlement over the universal riddle of friendship: its magic, its vagaries; how it can first seem to save us but later evanesce, with no one quite understanding why — perhaps simply because our natures morph and diverge, inexplicably yet as inevitably as rivers, to find their own ways.
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At its best, The Phoebe Variations is a compassionate work in which Hamilton conveys pivotal events, acknowledging that the people involved in them have completely different viewpoints ... It’s terrific stuff and, on a sentence-by-sentence basis, The Phoebe Variations is shimmering and beautiful ... The shape of Phoebe Variations can be off-putting, though ... Occasionally loses its way. Sometimes, we’re not sure why Phoebe is sharing information with us or whether it’s adding up to anything ... Hamilton gets us to a satisfying place, after a few narrative wobbles ... The last chapter is a stunner.
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Introspective ... A slow-paced coming-of-age story with themes of destiny and self-discovery that would enhance literary fiction collections.
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