Thoughts on The Portrait of a Novel by A. Natasha Joukovsky (2021)

Good morning! First of all, I wrote an article that was published this week in Polyester, you can read it here! It’s very exciting and also kind of scary, my first piece of opinion/criticism writing on an official platform - it feels surprisingly much more vulnerable than publishing anything creative.

On to the task at hand. I read The Portrait of a Novel by A. Natasha Joukovsky and here’s what I think. I’ll have to start by saying that the world in which this novel takes place is completely foreign to me for many reasons, but especially because it is so embedded in the corporate tech world.

That being said, I flewww through this book, it went down so smooth. Sometimes I write these without giving an overview of the general setup or plot, but for this book I think it really needs it. Especially because the underlaying mechanics of the story is what I had the most problems with. On the surface, I really enjoyed reading this book. The prose is very intentional and something I can only describe as chiseled?? Every sentence is considered and crafted, and the tone evokes the omniscient yet quirky narrators, which is absolutely looking down on all of the characters it’s describing, and ultimately making fun of them even as it pays a lot of attention to detail. The metaphors and themes all swirl around the myth of narcissus, evoking mirror images and representations in almost everything that the characters interact with and constant greek mythology references, to very satisfying and almost claustrophobic effect. But let me get to the actual story:

Wes is the CEO of a company called Ecco (clever) and lives in NYC with his wife Diana, who works for a consultant company Portmanteau. She wrote the original code that his company is based on. (a detail that doesn’t come up as much as it should, especially when they clash about money?)

Dale also works for Portmanteau, but in the Philly offices. He’s never worked with and doesn’t know Diana. His wife Vivien is a curator at a museum in Philly. He and Vivian met in college.

These are the four main characters, linked in the middle by Wes’s friend and employee Julian, who also knows Dale and Vivien from college. I expected this to be how the initial overlap of the couples is started, through mutual friends, but somehow all of these peoples lives are so intertwined without any of them knowing any of them or any previous associations being the reasons they’re so intertwined. I’ll explain.

Vivien is in New York because she is guest curating an exhibit on Ovid and Narcissus at the Met. Julian and Wes get a private tour of the exhibit because their company is somehow connected to the sponsor of the exhibit. Julian is going out with Viven after the tour to catch up (because they know each other from college) and Wes tags along because, shocker, Vivien and Wes had gone to boarding school together! It’s a coincidence! They’d never really interacted but both had massive crushes on each other.

Meanwhile, Diana is in Philly to work on Dale’s team (for some reason? never explained why. does this happen in business?)

Everyone in this story is connected by at least one point and on various levels of life, their companies interact, they have significant history and backstory, and they are actively held together by Julian in the middle. Even just typing all that out I feel like this guy:

So when everyone meets initially and there had been no knowledge or networking involved, I was extremely confused. There is definitely a flip and mirroring going on, which on its own is satisfying, but there is enough history and mutual friends/aquantances between these two couples that I found it hard to believe that each found the other, in the same weekend, without any of those mutuals being the reason they are in each others orbits. I kept waiting to understand that somehow Julian had introduced them or had somehow brought them together, but it seems like all of the companies these people are involved with just so happened to all collaborate and hire each other, independently, all at the same time, producing the circumstances that lead to the wife of one couple meeting the husband of the other, and vice versa.

There is one point when the head of a company calls Wes (the head of another company, these are all really high profile people) saying that he’s “up to his ears in consultants,” seemingly not realizing that one of those consultants is Wes’s wife. It seemed extremely improbable that no one knew who each other was, especially when instagram is so frequently mentioned. Wouldn’t these people have seen each other on their phones? Which leads me to my second critique:

I can’t believe I’m about to say this but, i’m not sure there was enough instagram in this novel. It might just be because of the marketing, the like symbol on the cover, and the reference to instagram on the inside flap, but I was expecting a lot more done with the parallel of narcissus and characters obsessing over their online image. It seems like a well that wasn’t quite tapped, and it never really comes into the plot at all. There are a few chapters that just describe a transcript of email exchanges, a list of things delivered to someones house, and other things like that, and there is one section where things play out in the comments of some instagram posts, but I found that to actually be pretty unbelievable in the timing of it. Someone asks a close friend a question in an instagram comment that they absolutely would have just texted them. And honestly, now that I think about it, pouring over their own and each other’s pages would be such a good modern connection to Narcissus, especially to show the way in which someone is preoccupied with how they are coming across online. And its frustrating that there’s none of that at all, especially when instagram is mentioned and positioned as one of the many titular “mirrors.”

These two couples meet their foil and what they discuss and how they interact with each other highlights not only the issues within their own relationships but who they are as people. I loved the clever mirror nature of these two storylines, it reminded me a bit of Wife Swap, a show I’ve never watched and only seen trailers for, so correct me if I’m wrong! However, it was clear that one storyline was clearly the favorite, and took over the narrative in the latter half of the book. I’m not sure if this was detrimental to the story as a whole, but I was left wondering what was going on with the other two characters.

With these main gripes aside, I found this an interesting and well thought out novel, which was mostly very satisfying to read. I know I have a tendency to focus on the negatives, but I don’t want you to think from this that my complaints overtook the good, tension and character development and metaphor and great sentences. Especially the metaphors and narrative voice, honestly.

As an aside, and returning to the Bojack Horseman references, there is also a new intern so comically well drawn that I could truly only picture him like this:

In the days after finishing this book, I felt myself still reaching for it and then being disappointed when I realized that it was over. That’s the best indication that I really enjoyed this book, even with its flaws, it was definitely a fun and immersive one. This week the author’s new book came out, and I’m very excited to start reading it.

There’s a conversation about a novel two thirds of the way through that ends with “a wedding? Don’t be ridiculous. No one ends novels with weddings anymore.” That made me 100% convinced that this novel would end with a wedding. you’ll have to read it yourself to find out whether or not I was right…

Until next time!