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1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
In 1910, Agnes Carter makes the wrong choice in marriage. After years as an independent woman of fortune, influential with the board of a prominent university because of her financial donations, she is now subject to the whims of an abusive, spendthrift husband. But when Bohemian naturalist and glassblower Ignace Novak reignites Agnes's passion for science, she begins to imagine a different life, and she sets her mind to getting it. Agnes's desperate actions breed secrecy, and the resulting silence echoes into the future. Her son Edward tries to make his way as a man of faith, but he struggles with what he does not understand about his parents, the meaning of family, and the world at large, while working at a stained-glass studio. In 1986, Edward's child Novak—just Novak—is an acrobatic window washer cleaning Manhattan high-rises, a compulsive caretaker soon caught up in the plight of Cecily, a small-town girl remade as a gender-bending Broadway ingenue. And in 2015, Cecily's daughter Flip—a burned-out stoner trapped in purgatorial cohabitation with her ex-girlfriend and a bureaucratic job firing cremains into keepsake glass ornaments—resolves to break the cycle of inherited secrets, reaching back through the generations in search of a family legacy that feels true. For fans of Mary Beth Keane, Min Jin Lee, and Rebecca Makkai, Glassworks is a profound and moving debut novel about family in all its forms.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      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.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Katherine Littrell gives an operatic and beautifully detailed performance of this gorgeous debut. Told in four distinct sections, it follows four generations of one family from 1910 through 2015. Through complicated specific characters, Wolfgang-Smith explores themes of inheritance, silence, trauma, and queerness, tracking what gets passed down between parents and children and what gets lost. Littrell creates unique personas for every character--from the gentle, softly accented lilt of a Bohemian glassblower in 1910 to the brash, rough-edged voice of a middle-aged window washer in 1880s New York. Her performance feels like a kind of time travel as she brings each place and time period to life. Her expert narration captures all the emotional nuances of this unusually structured family saga. L.S. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

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