A few weeks ago, my brother and I had a discussion about the Romans – as in, “How often do you think about the Romans? Daily?” Apparently it’s a thing, especially for men. For the record, I think about the Romans approximately twice a year, and it’s usually in relation to aqueducts.

Anyway, I was reminded of the conversation as I read Anna Kate Blair’s debut, The Modern, because the main character, Sophia, thinks about postmodernism and modernism all the time.

I was searching for answers about my future, feeling out of sync with postmodernity, but they were playing Pokémon Go.

I genuinely didn’t know if I was reacting to my circumstances, to a culture eager to classify my sexuality and evaluate my worth through my professional position, or if I was simply avoiding myself through examination of postmodern life.

On the subway to the airport, we sat on pale blue benches; a young girl opposite us cradled a backpack the colour of a peach emoji, like a postmodern personification of spring.

It was just one of the excruciating elements of this book. But before I get too far into the reasons why I couldn’t wait for The Modern to be over, I will direct you to Lisa’s review. She loved it!

The story revolves around Sophia, a thirty-year-old Australian with a doctorate in American art history. Sophia secured a fellowship at New York’s Museum of Modern Art but as her time there draws to an end, she is confronted by what to do next. This should have been made slightly less complicated by the fact of her US fiancé, Robert (and therefore access to a visa), however, Sophia falls in love with Cara, a young artist she meets in a bridal shop. Their connection leads Sophia to question the nature of her relationships, her career and ‘being modern’.

My main issue with this book was style. Yes, completely subjective. I found the language repetitive and overwrought. My Kindle has a handy feature that allows you to search key words and so, when I started feeling irritated by the the constant sentences beginning with ‘I felt/ thought/ wondered…’, I ran the numbers:

• I wondered – 191 sentences
• I thought – 233 sentences
• I felt – 352 sentences

Maybe Blair’s editor thought this was okay given the first-person stream-of-consciousness perspective but I found it lazy.

I wondered what it meant to make somebody the subject of another person’s photograph. I wondered, too, why we deified the female body that did not show strength, did not meet our gaze, but appeared to fall in slow-motion while we focused our cameras.

Furthermore, there was an enormous amount of superfluous detail, particularly around modern art, New York and the Appalachian Trail.

I read about Horace Kephart, who looked for the least detailed part of his map, convinced that there lay wilderness, and went to the Smokies and stayed until his death, in an automobile accident on a mountain road. Kephart was involved in plotting the route of the Appalachian Trail through the Smoky Mountains and the trail went, now, across the southern slope of Mount Kephart, named for him in another unnecessary flourish.

This is one of 43 mentions of the Appalachian Trail. It does not contribute to moving the narrative forward at all. The only reason the Trail is in the book is because Robert is walking it, his absence giving Sophia time to form a relationship with Cara. If the Trail wasn’t enough, the info-dumping about New York is relentless. I began to think that Blair kept a notebook full of pithy observations when she lived in New York, and has now crammed them all into one story.

Looking through a therapy lens, I was struck by Sophia’s complete lack of personal boundaries; her lack of emotional maturity; and how incredibly self-absorbed and self-important she was. Her criticisms of others (without examining her own actions) showed a frankly unbelievable lack of insight (heads-up Sofia, if you have to make a list of things you like about your fiancé in order to convince yourself you’re making a good decision, you’re most certainly not making a good decision). And the constant questioning of whether people considered her a friend was strange.

Lastly, I’m in no position to comment on the queer element of the plot but Sophia speaks of her queerness like it’s a novelty, and her indecisiveness around her relationships and what she desired seemed superficial and insincere.

…I missed the queer club nights I’d visited with Emily. I missed smearing glitter on my eyebrows and lending eyeliner to the men that I knew; I missed feeling as if there were infinite ways to exist, that people weren’t instantly readable, were more interested in dissolving categories than in explaining anything.

I do like a book that divides readers, rather than everyone saying, “It was fine…Three stars”. On that note, you’re either going to love The Modern… or not.

1.5/5

I was a bit disappointed with my chicken sandwich. I wondered what Emily thought of hers, hoped that she liked it. I wished, again, that I’d suggested the dumpling place. We could get pretzel soft serve from Milk Bar, afterward, here, at least. I knew tourists were usually excited about Momofuku Milk Bar, though I didn’t know if Emily counted as a tourist or if David Chang’s eateries had taken over LA, too.