Review: 'we Are Not Ourselves’ And Other Debut Novels

Matthew Thomas’ heartfelt and microscopically observed debut novel spans the second half of the 20th century, tracing three generations of an Irish immigrant family and one man’s descent into early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. If Eileen’s childhood, haunted by the alcoholism in her home, has been less than ideal, it has also fueled her unflagging desire for a better and more stable life and marriage than her parents enjoyed. When, on a New Year’s Eve blind date, she meets Ed Leary, a thoroughly decent neuroscientist from a similar background, it seems her upper-middle-class aspirations are finally within reach. [...] marriage to Ed — who does not share her passionate ambition — initial difficulties conceiving their son Connell, and the reality of Ed’s mental degeneration force Eileen to scale down her expectations even as she must expand her capacity to nurture and love. “We Are Not Ourselves” is a meticulous and moving debut that eschews the sweep of the big picture for the emotional truth of the extreme close-up. In a story titled “A Fulfilling Life,” a novelist admits that “nothing really happens” in his book since, “[a]s far as I was concerned plot is for genre writers.” Julia Elliott’s “The Wilds” is an at times beautiful and always bizarre debut collection of stories in the Southern Gothic, science fiction and fantasy molds. The title story is told from the vantage of a girl on the cusp of puberty, as she escapes the gloom of her own home to observe the Wild family, a large and unruly brood of eight boys who have moved with their parents into the formerly vacant split-level next door. By the end of the story, which veers into the paranormal, we are left with an oddly affecting if underdeveloped portrait of the awkwardness and uncertainty of young courtship and budding sexual awareness. In another story, “LIMBs,” an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s is fitted with bionic legs and undergoes a neural stimulation procedure to repair her damaged brain.