A story of secrets, loss, and the betrayals of memory: a lyrical novel of an aging woman confronting her romantic past under the mysterious skies of her island home
Off the coast of Georgia, near Savannah, generations have been tempted by strange blue lights in the sky near an island called Lyra. At the height of World War II, impressionable young Elle Ranier comes to the island when her new husband, Simon, is dispatched by his industrialist father to find the source of the mysterious lights. There they will live for decades, raising a family while employing much of the island's population in a quixotic campaign to find and exploit the elusive minerals rumored to lurk offshore.
Fifty years later, as Simon's business is shuttered in disarray, Elle looks back at her life on the mysterious island--and at a secret she herself has guarded for decades. As her memory recedes, her life seems a tangle of questions: How did the business survive so long without ever finding the legendary Lyra stones? How did her own life crumble under treatment for depression? And what became of the other man they brought to the island--handsome, raffish Gabriel, who risked everything to follow the light to its source?
With echoes of We Are Not Ourselves and even Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, The Stars Are Not Yet Bells is a darkly romantic story of the tantalizing, faithless relationship between ourselves and the lives and souls we leave behind.
Hannah Lillith Assadi received her MFA in fiction from the Columbia University School of the Arts. She also attended Columbia University for her bachelor's where she received the Philolexian Prize for her poetry and fiction and graduated summa cum laude. She was raised in Arizona and now lives in Brooklyn. Sonora is her first novel.
…no. The characters are flat and bland; the writing is full of decorative, fluffy, unnecessary words that obscure what the author is trying to articulate, and the second storyline (in which the protagonist is older) is terribly hard to follow due to the combination of the character having Alzheimer's and the author not knowing how to present this in a way that is not hella confusing for the reader.
The Stars Are Not Yet Bells has some of the most poetic writing I've ever read, and it was largely down to the beauty of the prose that I struggled to put this book down. I absolutely loved how different layers were revealed as Elle's memory faded in and out, and I thought that the switches between the past and present were combined without being confusing. Whilst it was fairly short, so I didn't have too much time to grow attached to the characters around Elle, I still found it interesting to read about the consequences of Elle's failing memory, and what that revealed about her and her family. Although the ending was fairly rapid, it was hauntingly tragic in a subtle way that I found really resonated with me.
Overall, a compelling, lyrical novel that I absolutely recommend, particularly if you're looking for a shorter read.
The story begins. Poor Elle. She must be in advanced stages of dementia. But her visions are so beautiful! Poetic. Perfect. Sad. This is going to be a hard read - following Elle to her end.
But, wait. Who are all these characters? The prose is still breathtaking, but I need to start paying attention. What all is going on? Clearly there is way more to this novel. Yes, it’s sad, but nuanced, layered, subtle. Wonderful.
I didn’t know what to expect from “The Stars are Not Yet Bells”. I knew that Hannah Lillith Assadi is a 5 Under 35 recipient and a Bingham Prize finalist, but I hadn’t read “Sonora”. I know that Riverhead is my favorite publisher and has never steered me wrong.
I was right about ‘Poor Elle’, but for reasons far more complex than I had first assumed. This story is so rich and beautifully told. The settings are evocatively described in all their beauty, mystery, and despair. The characters are plausible, some amazing, others terrifying. There is wonder and pain, mysticism and delight. But the language is the most memorable of all. It is simply stunning from beginning to end.
“The Stars Are Not Yet Bells” is a must read for all fans of lyrical fiction. Bravo Ms. Assadi. I’m off to buy “Sonora” and can’t wait for your next jewel.
Thank you to Riverhead Books and NetGalley for the eARC.
A vivid and lyrical novel exploring the mind of a woman suffering from dementia in her old age. Elle and her husband Simon were sent to Lyra Island by Simon's wealthy father to explore the mysterious blue lights around the island and discover if they really harbor minerals with mystical properties. Decades later, Elle's mind is no longer her own and she can't tell the difference from the past and the present; her life is becoming a jumble of memories. She starts to fixate on the one thing her life that got away - her true love, Gabriel. But where has he gone? Why is Elle's life in such disarray and what has happened to Simon's family's business? What are the blue lights? Beautiful, heartbreaking prose takes readers deep inside Elle's mind as she tries to piece together the timeline of her tumultuous life. Haunting, seductive, and enchanting. Narrator, Hillary Huber, does a perfect execution of Elle's disarrayed thoughts and narrative. Poetic and enchanting - this story will stay with readers long after they've finished the novel.
Blanche's fountain pen runs dry mid-sentence, so the upset garbage can she's describing remains "unapolog" for the moment. She shakes the writing implement. The effort makes her perspire, so she mops her forehead with a perfumed handkerchief and pours herself another tumbler of bourbon.
Her brother-in-law Stnaley, stinking of manual labor and unalloyed testosterone, his muscular upper body barely sheathed by a sleeveless t-shirt, again swaggers into her boudoir uninvited, uncouth and unannounced as a drunk seeking the outhouse behind a disreputable tavern. "So whatcha doin, Dame Blanche?"
Blanche fortifies herself with a sip of bourbon, a dreadful habit, she knows, but one she cannot forsake if she's to live in close confines with the sweaty brute her sister Stella married during a libidinous lapse of judgment. "I'm afraid it's nothing that would interest you, Mr. Kowalski," Blanche demurs, fighting to keep her voice cool and ladylike. "I'm writing a novel."
"Oh, really?" A simian grin distorts the vulgar handsomeness of Stanley's face. "I like novels. I read a real good one once - 'Lady Chatterley's Lover.'" The brusquely beautiful ogre unleashes a cackle so cringeworthy that Stella must drown her repulsion in more bourbon.
"I'm not attempting something quite so . . earthy, Mr. Kowalski," Blanche returns. "My muse, if I may be so vain as to claim it as such, is my life."
"Oh, you're writin' a book about havin' a big plantation and then losing it?" Stanley's grin is as cruel as it is mesmerizing.
"In a manner of speaking," she informs him. "I'm writing about love and loss and memory and beauty," she continues, losing herself a bit to the rapture of art. "There'll be a beautiful woman, her weak-willed husband, the love she lost, a faithful Negro servant -"
"Sounds swell," Stanley barks, punctuating his sarcasm with a belch for which he refused to beg Blanche's pardon. "Let me guess - one of your old boyfriends works for a publishing company and he's gonna get you a great big advance."
Blanche feels her eyebrows ascend her lily-white forehead. "Why, yes, Mr. Kowalski! As a matter of fact, that's the case! My former beau, Hep Shuntleigh, believes my idea has great commercial and artistic potential and should be calling any minute now to discuss the particulars."
"Yeah, well, I wouldn't wait with sandwiches by the phone if I were you," smirks the shirtless Polack. "Anyway, I'm goin' bowling. If the kid who collects for the Evening Star shows up, I left a quarter on the end table."
"I didn't know stars took collections," Blanche deadpans. The witticism leaves Staley's sculpted face as blank as his mind. She can quite literally hear crickets.
"So anyway, Dame Blanche, what are you going to call your masterpiece?"
"How funny you should mention stars, Mr. Kowalski. I've settled up the title 'The Stars Are Not Yet Bells.'"
Stanley is as magnetically underwhelmed as ever. "What the hell does that mean?"
"Oh, I don't know!" Blanche cries, suddenly unable to bear the weight of the world, or endure its cruelty, or laugh in the face of its indifference to tender feeling. "Haven't you an appointment at the bowling alley? Why don't you just grab one of your balls and leave me alone?"
A really quick, beautifully written read. Low-ish score because it never really rose above average to anything truly special or worthy of setting aside for a future re-read. But definitely worth spending an afternoon with.
I was quite impressed with the poetic beauty of Ms. Assadi's first novel Sonora. So it was with some anticipation that I approached The Stars. In this novel she has grown into a more mature storyteller, with a deeper understanding of the pathos of her characters. The poetry is still there, though, throbbing beneath the characters' struggle to make sense of their lives. As a result, the haunting imagery and felt sensory detail make this novel an imperative read for anyone who loves a well-wrought story that echoes in one's soul.
How to classify this blue jewel of a novel? It’s romantic, it’s sexy, it’s spooky, it’s heartbreaking. Assadi writes like none of her contemporaries; if anything, she’s in conversation with long-dead masters of the Southern Gothic. To read Elle’s story - to inhabit her memories, to witness her visions, to make sense of all the gleaming, seductive shards - is to encounter a haunted house, then become one. I was enchanted by the poetry of Assadi’s sentences, but more than that, I fell deeply under the spell of her characters. A beautiful book.
This was such an easy read and also a beautifully written book. It is the story of a woman, Elle, with dementia but it is also a story about her wonderful and tragic past. During her times of confusion is when we are swept into her ethereal dreams of her past. I enjoyed reading this book. It is fascinating to me to think about what might go on in a person’s mind with dementia.
A vivid, almost cinematic short novel from the point of view of an elderly woman suffering from dementia/Alzheimer's. It's almost plotless, just the last months on Lyra Island with its decades of mysteries and secrets as the barriers to the past in Elle's mind come down until she's fixated on the one person she lost and could never recover from. If you're paying attention, the conversations around Elle will tell you what the "blue lights" in the sea probably are, she doesn't register this information but the reader does.
CW for dementia/Alzheimer's, mental illness (depression) and its treatment in the mid-20th century, brief instances of homophobia on page (well, Elle's memory which is on page)
Hannah Lillith Assadi further proves she is a master storyteller in this, her second novel. Woven with achingly beautiful prose, a richly crafted plot, and characters that speak to readers beyond the page, “The Stars Are Not Yet Bells” is a must read.
reading this novel, told through the eyes of a woman experiencing alzheimer's, is like standing in front of a waterfall and trying to catch its stream – you catch droplets, occasionally cup handfuls, but most of what comes at you falls right through your fingers. which is to say that my favorite part of this novel was the experience of reading it – the accuracy, and fright, of it. I reveled in the experience of trying to hold on to as much as I could as we somersaulted through time – forward, backward, up, down, etc.
one of the limitations of that formal decision, though, is the fact that characterization becomes difficult – as such, I struggled through the first quarter-ish of the book, with characters that felt more like sketches, and sometimes straight-up clichés, than people (and I'd add that by the end, a few of them never moved beyond that sketch-like state). this was difficult for me, as a character-oriented reader. but it was worth it by the end, toughing it out – and the writing is luminous, and the setting is unique and captivating.
First, thank you to the publisher and author for providing me with a digital ARC of this title via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review. It was the cover and title that drew me and made me interested in reading this title. Unfortunately, after finishing the book, the cover and title remain the only parts that interest me. Found this story to be so long and tedious. It was filled with characters that I had no interest or sympathy for. It felt like a book of bad decisions, blame, and consequences. I am glad to be done with this title. It was a letdown for me.
I found this novel confusing at first, but it grew on me. The narrator, now an old woman, is not always reliable, mainly due to Alzheimer's. She's spent 50 years of marriage on a small island off the Georgia coast. Her husband's business plans have not worked out and his extended family have taken over the property. Ms Assadi's descriptions of the environment and history are beautiful. The story is non-linear, jumps around, but finds a suitable conclusion in the end. The main focus stays on the inner life of Elle and her secrets.
A lyrical walkabout of the mind and tale of a woman with dementia - as someone who's experienced two relatives developing dementia, this story rung close to home. I was taken very off guard by this book.
This novel is about a woman named Elle who is facing dementia. As she's succumbing to her illness and forgetting pieces of her life, she begins to live more in her past with her lover, who's been dead for many decades. The moment of their relationship resurfaces and reemerges. Simultaneously, she begins to see these strange, metaphysical, blue lights (called the Lyra) that occupy the island off the coast of Georgia, where she lived with her family. Through Elle's fading memory, she looks at a lifetime of secrets and betrayal.
The writing was gorgeous, and I especially loved the passage that read, "It is not yet the end. Moss descends from the oaks thick as curtains veiling the night's secrets from the living. A wild mare and her foal are out to feed before the dawn. Seagulls bark their hunger at the sky. And Lyra, our island, remains above the sea. The ocean has not engulfed all this, even though I have woken from that dream I've had again and again over the decades. In last night's rendering, after the island has burned and sunken into the waters and all the stars had fallen into the Atlantic, I could still swim. And beneath the surface, wandering among the blue constellations like a mermaid, at last, I found Gabriel."
Den här boken, som jobbar med lager och bruten kronologi, gör en ansats att förmedla hur det blir när minnet fallerar i samband med demens. Den har mycket potential, både sett till den biten men även sett till övrig handling och mellanmänskliga relationer. Tyvärr blir känslan att det fallerar, att boken känns tunn och tillgjord. I läsecirkeln pratade vi bland annat om en grundbult i handlingen: de speciella stenar som finns på ön Lyra där boken utspelar sig. Initialt känns det tydligt som att stenarna är en övergripande metafor för det som händer huvudkaraktären Elle och hennes liv på ön, men när stenarna sedan behandlas som något verkligt, och som används som ”medicin” helt plötsligt, vet man inte riktigt vad som pågår längre. Det kändes inte trovärdigt och det var slarvigt skrivet. Det finns mycket medicinsk kunskap i läsecirkeln och alla reagerade på att den här delen kändes orimlig. Även beskrivningar av elbehandling/ECT låg långt ifrån den faktiska verkligheten. Fint skriven bok, men det täckte tyvärr inte upp för brister i handling, karaktärer, research osv.
I am going to need 3-5 business days to recover from this book.
Beautifully devastating. The commencement of this book was slow and I almost put it down because I felt confused and disconnected, fitting consider the main character’s affliction with dementia.
This book is a psychological fiction that brushes the edges of historical fiction, exploring the lives of the Elle and Simon, past and present through love, loss and the connections made around them.
The writing is in a sense poetically whimsical, sprinkled with magical realism as a result of our main characters dementia.
This is a book that leaves you feeling haunted and being under 300 pages, I would say a must read.
3⭐️⭐️⭐️. This book was SO SAD. It’s from the perspective of a woman with Alzheimer’s reliving her memories in glimpses. I had it on my shelf for a number of months and listed to the audio - the narration and writing was beautiful but the subject matter probably wouldn’t have been something I would’ve picked up if I hadn’t found this in an LFL.
Very poetic and graceful writing but to a fault. So much time spent building the environment and nature and the outside that I honestly have no idea what was going on with the plot. Got 30 pages in and didn’t finish :/
This book missed the mark for me. I didn’t care for the story-telling technique (although I get what the author was going for), I thought the protagonist was bland, and I didn’t like any of the characters. Some scenes were very beautiful and poetic, but overall I am disappointed.
Heartbreaking and beautiful; "The Stars Are Not Yet Bells" is an excellently written novel full of emotion. As Elle begins to lose her mind we see her life through jumbled memories, jumping from decade to decade with no particular order. But as her memories unravel you'll soon learn that there's more to Elle's story than a mysterious illness and lost love.
A fever dream of a book. I loved the way the story goes back and forth between time and it’s truly beautifully written. I wish there were more details about Gabriel but can also appreciate the mystery.
This story is told from the point of view of someone suffering from dementia, so that alone made it confusing, but it was made worse by the overly flowery & convoluted writing. It seemed interesting in the beginning, but the story never really moved forward. It was just a mix of obnoxious characters and bad decisions.