Dan Kois is the author of three nonfiction books: How to Be a Family, a memoir; The World Only Spins Forward, an oral history of Tony Kushner's Angels in America (with Isaac Butler); and Facing Future, part of the 33 1/3 series of music criticism. He's a longtime writer, editor, and podcaster at Slate. He lives in Arlington, Virginia with his family.
It's 1991. Em moved to New York City for excitement and possibility, but the big city isn't quite what she thought it would be. Working as a literary agent's assistant, she's down to her last nineteen dollars but has made two close friends: Emily, a firebrand theater director living in a Lower East Side squat, and Lucy, a middle-aged novelist and single mom. Em's life revolves around these two wildly different women and their vividly disparate yet equally assured views of art and the world. But who is Em, and what does she want to become? It's 2004. Em is now Emily, a successful book editor, happily married and barely coping with the challenges of a new baby. And suddenly, Lucy and Emily return to her life: Her old friend Lucy's posthumous book needs a publisher, and her ex-friend Emily wants to rekindle their relationship. As they did once before, these two women—one dead, one very alive—force Emily to reckon with her decisions, her failures, and what kind of creative life she wants to lead. A sharp, reflective, and funny story of a woman coming into herself and struggling to find her place, Vintage Contemporaries is a novel about art, parenthood, loyalty, and fighting for a cause—the times wee do the right thing, and the times we fail—set in New York City on both sides of the millennium.
My major point of contention with this book is how it is a book that details the female experience and female friendships, but it's by a man. This discomfort is very apparent in the opening chapter, with a young Em finding her way in New York City. I felt there was a disconnect with the writer and the subject, and that never stopped bothering me while reading. While there are moments where Kois describes parenthood and motherhood well (which I'm only saying because I've read Goodreads reviews on this book by mothers that say the same), I was never not aware of what I would describe as a conflict of interest.
The writing at the beginning is slow to get started, but it is a pretty engaging story once you get through the first part. I enjoyed the time jumps and switches—this kept me interested in getting to the further chapters. The story itself wasn't all that humorous, but I can see how a different audience might enjoy the culture references and such. I personally felt like the writing didn't go as deep as it could have—I left the book wondering what I was supposed to think about Emily and Emily's relationship at the end. The closure and sense of peace for Emily and Lucy was apparent to me, but not so much between Emily and Emily.
I am so interested in female friendships, so I was looking forward to seeing that depicted here. However, the book's message about that was overshadowed by Kois's commentary on the publishing industry (necessary, but felt dated because of the form of the book despite its obvious timeliness) and on parenting. There was an interesting opportunity to expand more on the point about degenerative diseases and art lasting forever, but I felt like Kois never connected the right dots to make these points resound loudly in a reader's find. All in all, I was disappointed in the read because of the potential it didn't live up to.
While Kois's book is an engaging read and its time switching narrative is interesting, unfortunately I don't feel like it dives deeply enough into its themes for it to be the strongest book on female friendships and the female experience that it could be.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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