Idra Novey

ean left her marriage when her stepdaughter Leah was ten years old. The two were completely out of contact until four years previously when Jean had invited Leah for a visit.

The area where the family had lived, and where Jean still lives, has deteriorated into a rough, poverty stricken, almost abandoned town in Appalachia. Jean has become a sculptor of derelict metal and other scraps which she fashions into huge works that she calls manglements. Jean has befriended a young, alcohol-driven, gun carrying very red-neck young man to help her with the heavy work.

The reunion between Lean and Jean failed when Jean took Leah to a favorite overlook and the young man helper appeared as part of a group of men that terrorized Leah. When Leah perceived that Jean has chosen helping this young man rather than nurturing her daughter, Leah once again put the relationship behind her.

Now Leah has received a phone call that her mother has died while working on her sculptures. It’s up to Leah to decide what to do with Jean’s beloved manglements and the frightening young man that Jean was trying to help.

It’s a bit ironic that this is a story of good intentions, high expectations and failed connections because that is how I would describe how the book worked (or did not quite work) for me.… (more)

This is about a woman and her stepmother, and their difficult relationship. At different times in their lives, they have been very close and very distant, and this novel gives us each of their points of view about what brought them close and pushed them apart. Looming over all of this is the stepmother's art: she compulsively welds large sculptures, often risking life and limb to do so.

Novey does some interesting things with the two characters' points of view, depicting the same scenes through both characters' eyes so that readers can see how they misinterpret and misunderstand each other. None of the main characters are particularly likeable, and the ending of the book is rather abrupt.… (more)

“I thought I could be both. Mostly grandmother, and on occasion a bit wolf.” —
Idra Novey, “ Take What You Need”

Little Red Riding Hood is not the only fairy-tale allusion in Idra Novey's striking 2023 novel. The story may also remind readers of Cinderella or any fairy tale with a wicked stepmother. Is Jean, Leah's stepmother, wicked or not? Is she the grandmother or the wolf?

Leah loved her stepmother when she was a little girl, but Jean's marriage to her father didn't last, and the two were separated for many years. A reunion a few years before left Leah questioning her previous affection for Jean, and they parted under unpleasant circumstances. Now with a family of her own, Leah learns Jean has died and she is invited by a man named Elliott to come to Jean's house to, in effect, "take what you need."

In alternate chapters we read Leah's story in the present and Jean's story filling in the time between her marriage to Leah's father and her own death from falling off a sculpture in her own home.

Jean is a frustrated artist who uses her retirement years to create sculptures in her living room. She calls them Manglements. Her art is made from scrap metal, discarded mirrors and other junk found in her Appalachian town —"take what you need," in other words. Eventually it becomes so enormous, yet so impressive, that after her death nobody knows what to do with it.

Elliott is a young man with no apparent future, but with an unsuspected appreciation for art. He provides the muscle for her work and eventually moves in with her. In between he often breaks into her house at night (while she listens from her bed) and steals things — once again, "take what you need."

The novel's three major characters have complex relationships with one another, each of them mostly grandmother, and on occasion a bit wolf.… (more)