Surprise Me

Goldstone traces a decades-long friendship and mentorship in this debut novel. College student and aspiring novelist Isabelle Rothman chooses Daniel Jablonski as the advisor for her senior year independent study project. She greatly admires Daniel’s early novels, but she finds out that the reclusive, unpredictable novelist is suffering from both writer’s block and agoraphobia, not to mention deeply damaged relationships with both of his adult children. It turns out, however, that mentoring Isabelle might be just the thing to help Daniel begin to overcome his personal fears, just as he inspires Isabelle to become a more fearless writer. Over the next 20 years, Isabelle and Daniel intermittently turn to one another through episodes of personal crisis and professional frustrations. Those who enjoy the more measured pace and tighter focus on the writers’ craft in the novel’s first part (not to mention the slow-burning growth of Isabelle and Daniel’s relationship) may grow restless at later sections’ temporal leaps, awkward shifts in perspective, and movement away from an explicit “portrait of the artist” narrative. In particular, the denouement, which takes place after a forward jump of 14 years, just glosses over events that could have been the real payoff for the situation developed in the novel’s early pages. Although Goldstone nominally tells both Isabelle and Daniel’s stories, Daniel’s later-in-life reinvention of self forms the far more compelling narrative arc. Agent: Marly Rusoff, Marly Rusoff Literary Agency. (June)