Negative space A novel

Linden's penetrating debut novel (after the collection Remember How I Told You I Loved You?) depicts a woman balancing motherhood, teaching, and the uncertainties of the Covid-19 pandemic. The unnamed narrator is a part-time English teacher at a private New York City high school, beset by disengaged students and demanding parents. Before the pandemic, her husband was often abroad for work; now that he's home, he does little to help raise their two young children. After the lockdown is lifted and school resumes in person, the narrator happens upon her student Olivia alone and unmasked in a classroom with Jeremy, the long-tenured head of the English department, with their heads touching. Over the next few days, the narrator relays her concerns to colleagues and administrators, but the school is slow to respond and alludes to ongoing legal and financial drama with Olivia's extended family. Meanwhile, the narrator begins to doubt what she saw. Linden grounds her scorching insights on digital rabbit holes and other aspects of modern life in the poignancy of the everyday (while trying to uncover Olivia's story online, the narrator observes, "The phone was like the children's toy baskets, in which I'd find the felt doll Lewis had lost, and also dried-up clementine peels"). The result is an evocative study of the gap between intuition and truth. (Apr.)

A woman teaching at a Manhattan private school witnesses a suspicious encounter between a faculty member and a student. Taking place over the course of one week, this debut focuses on the accrual of small cracks in the life of the narrator, a wife and mother of two small children, set against the massive fissure of life during Covid-19. One Monday, after arriving at her part-time job teaching English, she witnesses a senior colleague, Jeremy, alone in a classroom with a ninth grade student, Olivia. Jeremy is the advisor to the school literary magazine, Negative Space, and Olivia is on staff, so this encounter seems normal--except that the classroom door is closed, and the narrator witnesses Jeremy lean in to touch his head to Olivia's, a gesture she feels compelled to relay to the school administration. As the week unfolds, Linden treats this narrative thread with a weight equal to other events tugging at the woman: an ongoing dental emergency for her anxious daughter; a fainting episode; a husband who spends his time on Zoom calls or spritzing his pandemic-purchase plants; a looming scandal in Olivia's wealthy family; and, of course, the gradually escalating fallout of the narrator's decision to report the ambiguous gesture she saw. The decision to balance all these facets equally diffuses some of the potential drama of the novel, and the narrator's "numbness" and uncertainty, though consistent with her world-weariness, contribute to a restrained style that some might find detached, even dissociated. Ultimately, though, Linden is a miniaturist, and the precision with which she works, whether describing a child's existential bedtime angst or Zoom audio glitches, can be as satisfying as any more explosive plot. A subtle and promising debut about the hazy liminality of late pandemic life. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.