Glassworks

March 20, 2023
Wolfgang-Smith contends with vocation, identity, and the meaning of family in her appealing debut. The first of four sections takes place in 1910 Boston, where heiress Agnes Carter marries an unscrupulous and abusive man and becomes enamored of a brilliant but volatile sculptor named Ignace Novak, whom she’s hired to produce glass models of flora and fauna. In 1938, Agnes’s son, Edward, longs to pursue a religious career, but lacks the required theological background, then stumbles into a career making liturgical stained glass. In the 1980s, Edward’s gender fluid offspring, Novak, works as a window cleaner in New York City. After Novak is dragged reluctantly to a Broadway performance, Novak becomes besotted with Cecily, a captivating, gender-bending swing performer. The novel’s final section, set in 2015, focuses on Cecily’s daughter, known as “Flip,” who lives miserably in the closet-size spare room of her ex-girlfriend’s apartment because she can’t afford to move out. Flip works at a start-up that creates glass paperweights out of cremains, where a co-worker encourages her to look into her mysterious given name—Novak—and the glass bee heirloom she once thought was just a trinket. As the various threads tie together, the author makes clever use of her central metaphor, considering glass as sharp, fluid, changeable, and even surprising—much like the characters she depicts. This is a radiant exploration of a complex legacy. Agent: Danielle Bukowski, Sterling Lord Literistic.