Finished reading Susannah Felts’s This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record last night. I’ve been a fan of Susannah’s writing since the days when we were both maintaining blogs on the TNI Books site, circa 2000/2001. I posted what follows in my review of the book at Goodreads, but figured it couldn’t hurt to post it here as well.
Some initial thoughts: Damn good. It’s a coming of age story, with multiple elements that make the story being told fresh: the structure, which very subtly in its second half revisits the themes that are seemingly taken for granted in the first; an exploration of class that’s very much rooted in a specific time and place; an attention to detail (specifically, photography) and a conception of how the making of art can affect the people in an artist’s life.
Also, it reminded me that I need to look at more of William Eggleston’s work.
Also, unless I’m completely hallucinating, there are multiple subtle tips of the hat to Wings of Desire in the second half, which seemed like a nice touch.
And it’s a fine entry into the underrated genre of Only Child Lit, for which I have a natural affinity for obvious reasons.
Only Child Lit is a genre? How do I not know that? You’ll need to give me some recommendations.
It may be a genre I just made up, but also at the top of its list would be Murakami’s “South of the Border, West of the Sun”.