SOLSTICE, yet another straight-people-unhappy tale with lovely bits about dance

SOLSTICE
CAROL GILLIGAN
Random House (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A brilliant but restless dancer discovers the true meaning of love and intimacy through the ebbs and flows of her marriage in this exquisitely written novel—from the bestselling author and psychologist whose feminist classic, In a Different Voice, revolutionized our understanding of women’s lives

Boston, 1969. Eve, a dancer whose feelings are expressed through the body and movement, senses an inexplicable distance growing between herself and her husband, Gabe, a journalist and father of her two children. Feeling lost and alone, she begins an affair; Gabe detects it immediately and begins one himself. Yet somehow they find their way back to each other, and when Eve gives birth to a daughter, their marriage becomes vital again.

Years later, when Gabe returns from a reporting trip to the Middle East and Berlin, Eve again perceives something is wrong in her marriage. Gabe no longer seems like the man she once knew. He has always had a darkness she could not fathom—deep psychological scars from his childhood, when Gabe escaped Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport.

Amsterdam, 1991. Newly separated from Gabe, Eve has accepted a fellowship to choreograph a dance inspired by the story of Adam and Eve. When a colleague introduces her to a new translation of the ancient text, Eve begins to redefine the way she thinks about women, men, and relationships—and, perhaps, to see another path back to her marriage.

In this emotionally riveting novel, Carol Gilligan draws on her unsurpassed psychological understanding of women's lives to explore a new vision of love and intimacy. Sweeping across decades and continents, attuned to the rhythms of life and time, Solstice is a provocative and profound portrait of what it takes to truly love another.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Plenty of buzz around this tale of a Holocaust survivor haunted by his myriad ghosts, the burgeoning dancer/life force he marries, the challenging marriage they undertake, and lots of Jewish history relevant to the present day.

My interest in straight peoples' intimacy is not large enough to support this latter aspect of the story as my focus. I was a great deal more interested in Eve's story of how dance could explain the myth of Adam and Eve. It was *wonderful* to read Author Gilligan's evocations of dance as an art form. Eve's learning of the deeper meanings, the cultural resonances, the eternal quality of myths with a rabbi's learnèd guidance after she splits from Gabe in 1991 was as involving as anything I've read this year.

It's mired in a relationship novel I don't care about, one that's intended to add another resonant frequency to the myth of Adam and Eve, but that ends up not doing that. If I was supposed to care about Eve and Gabe as a couple, why is Gabe so...amorphous? Their three kids are names, when every couple I have ever known (that has kids) honestly thinks and talks more about their kids than anything else.

Author Gilligan's a psychologist so these are clearly informed choices made with intent, not lacunae of understanding. As they did not make sense to me, I can't say her information came through to me in the novel she wrote. I'll forget these characters in a week, but will carry the passages describing dance with me.