My review of I'm From Nowhere by Lindsay Lerman

 

Towards the end of Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, Stevens, the chief butler at Darlington Hall, reconciles himself to the realization that by agreeing to live a subservient life, he couldn’t even make his own mistakes. “Really, one has to ask oneself, what dignity is there in that?” Lindsay Lerman’s central character, Claire, of her powerful debut novel I’m From Nowhere, struggles with a somewhat similarly existential pang when John, her husband, suddenly passes away at a young age. In Lerman’s sensitive and compassionate hands, Claire juggles, for days since John’s death, the twin emotions of grief and identity crisis. Claire is barely thirty years old. That only complicates emotions further. Two of their friends, Andrew and Luke, are present at the funeral silently polishing their sexual and/or romantic bait. Both men, in the past, have made their attraction to her clear, risking their friendship with John. That Claire never confided in her husband about Andrew’s advance or Luke’s love letter lest that rupture the friendship among men, served to prop up her self-esteem, which serves, in essence, as the novel’s dominant, if not central, theme.

You can read the entire review here.