Genre Fiction
![Zoe Whittall - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_zoe_whittall.jpg)
The Spectacular: A Novel
Three generations of women strive for real freedom in this startling, provocative novel exploring sexuality, gender, and maternal ambivalence, from the acclaimed author of The Best Kind of People.
"In the best books, characters feel like my friends, but with the mothers of The Spectacular, they came to feel like my family."-Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby
It's 1997 and Missy is a cellist in an indie rock band on tour across America. At twenty-two years old, she gets on stage every night and plays the song about her absent mother that made the band famous. As the only girl in the band, she's determined to party just as hard as everyone else, loving and leaving a guy in every town. But then she meets a tomboy drummer who is hard to forget, and a forgotten flap of cocaine strands her at the border.
Fortysomething Carola is just surfacing from a sex scandal at the yoga center where she has been living when she sees her daughter, Missy, for the first time in ten years-on the cover of a music magazine.
Ruth is eighty-three and planning her return to the Turkish seaside village where she spent her childhood. But when her granddaughter, Missy, winds up crashing at her house, she decides it's time that the strong and stubborn women in her family find a way to understand one another again.
In this sharply observed novel, Zoe Whittall captures three very different women who each struggle to build an authentic life. Definitions of family, romance, gender, and love will radically change as they seek out lives that are nothing less than spectacular.
"In the best books, characters feel like my friends, but with the mothers of The Spectacular, they came to feel like my family."-Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby
It's 1997 and Missy is a cellist in an indie rock band on tour across America. At twenty-two years old, she gets on stage every night and plays the song about her absent mother that made the band famous. As the only girl in the band, she's determined to party just as hard as everyone else, loving and leaving a guy in every town. But then she meets a tomboy drummer who is hard to forget, and a forgotten flap of cocaine strands her at the border.
Fortysomething Carola is just surfacing from a sex scandal at the yoga center where she has been living when she sees her daughter, Missy, for the first time in ten years-on the cover of a music magazine.
Ruth is eighty-three and planning her return to the Turkish seaside village where she spent her childhood. But when her granddaughter, Missy, winds up crashing at her house, she decides it's time that the strong and stubborn women in her family find a way to understand one another again.
In this sharply observed novel, Zoe Whittall captures three very different women who each struggle to build an authentic life. Definitions of family, romance, gender, and love will radically change as they seek out lives that are nothing less than spectacular.
Editorial Reviews
"Whittall's knockout novel is a multigenerational riot of grrrlhood and womanhood, a brisk and wistful tour through the ambivalence of responsibility."-Oprah Daily
"The Spectacular is an homage to womanhood, motherhood, sexuality, and queerness as it chronicles the lives of three ferociously strong protagonists who are wildly different from one another."-Associated Press
"Zoe Whittall's taut novel The Spectacular has all the trappings to become the season's dishiest read. It's also a gem of literary fiction. . . . In Whittall's smart and capable hands, these unconventional women are given the space to experience their full, complicated lives."-BookPage
"An occasionally melancholy often darkly comedic story from a sharply talented writer, The Spectacular is a vibrant homage to living life on your own terms."-PureWow
"Whittall addresses motherhood and autonomy in ways I've never seen done before. A fascinating stunner of a novel, The Spectacular is exactly that: spectacular!"-Kristen Arnett, author of With Teeth
"This book will leave you with a brilliant roar inside your chest-Whittall's prose is afire with the most complex and daring forms of empathy."-Alissa Nutting, author of Made for Love
"Just imagine this book dog-eared, spine-cracked, pages limp from use, living by your bedside-because from the moment you open The Spectacular, you'll happily succumb to a totally absorbing contemporary epic with characters and social worlds that are Edith Wharton–level dimensional but as relatable as your own uncannily recognizable self."-Jordy Rosenberg, author of Confessions of the Fox
"This is a novel about how we learn to define who we are, about the courage to make decisions nobody will understand, and about the profound complexities of maternal ambivalence. Both expansive and intimate, wild and tender, I loved it."-Ashley Audrain, author of
"The Spectacular is an homage to womanhood, motherhood, sexuality, and queerness as it chronicles the lives of three ferociously strong protagonists who are wildly different from one another."-Associated Press
"Zoe Whittall's taut novel The Spectacular has all the trappings to become the season's dishiest read. It's also a gem of literary fiction. . . . In Whittall's smart and capable hands, these unconventional women are given the space to experience their full, complicated lives."-BookPage
"An occasionally melancholy often darkly comedic story from a sharply talented writer, The Spectacular is a vibrant homage to living life on your own terms."-PureWow
"Whittall addresses motherhood and autonomy in ways I've never seen done before. A fascinating stunner of a novel, The Spectacular is exactly that: spectacular!"-Kristen Arnett, author of With Teeth
"This book will leave you with a brilliant roar inside your chest-Whittall's prose is afire with the most complex and daring forms of empathy."-Alissa Nutting, author of Made for Love
"Just imagine this book dog-eared, spine-cracked, pages limp from use, living by your bedside-because from the moment you open The Spectacular, you'll happily succumb to a totally absorbing contemporary epic with characters and social worlds that are Edith Wharton–level dimensional but as relatable as your own uncannily recognizable self."-Jordy Rosenberg, author of Confessions of the Fox
"This is a novel about how we learn to define who we are, about the courage to make decisions nobody will understand, and about the profound complexities of maternal ambivalence. Both expansive and intimate, wild and tender, I loved it."-Ashley Audrain, author of
Readers Top Reviews
AniShawn LaddKeegan
Zoe Whittal's layered character study of motherhood, identity and attachment is unputdownable. Plus it had me digging back into the best crunchy music of the 90s with gusto after I finished reading so I could keep the vibe alive. One of this fall's must reads.
This is my first time reading Whittal and I will now check out her other books. A great novel with interesting character development, passion, fun, tears and heartbreak. It had me at every page.
SJ
This is the story about the lives of three women, each in different stages of their lives. As Missy, Carola, and Ruth tell their life stories I found I related to and could see parts of myself in each of them. The book was a fast read and I did not want to put the book down. These women are not perfect and they have plenty of flaws and make plenty of mistakes. In other words, they are human! Their honest thoughts and actions were so refreshing! Women so rarely live the life they want to live, but instead they live what is expected of them by society. To hear voices that were not afraid to choose the path they wanted was motivating! We can choose this at any time in our life, it doesn't matter what has happened in our past. I would have liked to hear more about Ruth, but I understand this story is primarily about Carola and Missy. While it isn't necessarily a mother-daughter relationship book, their relationship is a big part of the story and I appreciated their maturity and journey together. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.
bstar024
The Spectacular by Zoe Whittall is a thought-provoking meditation on motherhood told across three generations of women - the challenges, the joys, the very question of becoming. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.
Val Lawrence
Three generations of women, searching for their own version of happiness and fulfillment. The story opens with Missy in her 20’s in a punk rock band, her mother Carola in her 40’s tucked away working in an Ashram and Ruth, Carola’s mother-in-law and Missy’s grandmother in her 60’s. Told in multiple POV’s, this book showcases each character, their childhood, their views on marriage and motherhood and the way that their past experiences have shaped their future. This is a story of motherhood and feminism. Each character struggles with being a mom and the responsibility that comes with it. Carola, along with Ruth’s son, Bryce, start a commune called Sunflower after they marry young. All the dreams for shared work and shared lives ended up being more than Carola could handle as she became the only “responsible” one in the commune and was tasked with handling basically everything. Unfortunately for Missy, Carola decided her only solution was to walk away from the commune, and her family. Although she is a somewhat unlikeable character, the author really gives insight into how her decisions were based on her own childhood and relationship with her distant mother and alcoholic father. Missy is fully intent on never being a mother based on her own experience. She embraces the freedom of being on the road and is quite promiscuous. Another result of her abandonment during childhood I thought. Always needing for someone to want her. She questions her sexuality and it was interesting to learn that it was something her mother also wrestled with. Missy struggles with relationships outside of her band and runs from commitment. The middle of the book jumps about 15 years, and I felt that jump was too jarring. She jumps from being a touring punk rock band member to being married and is thinking that now she would like to be a mother. She flip flops back and forth on that throughout the last half of the book. She is known for her hard exterior, but the author shows that as her defense mechanism. Yet another result of being left by her mother so young – it’s easier to act like you don’t care. Last but not least is Ruth. Her backstory was very interesting, growing up in Turkey, getting married and having to escape Turkey with her son and husband (and his mistress!). Her marriage falls apart and her relationship with Bryce was consuming. She doted on him as her only child, and that is part of what led to the demise of Carola and Bryce’s relationship. Ruth steps in when Carola walks away from her family. She was an integral party of Missy’s life as she was growing up and their relationship was strong. She is instrumental in trying to repair the fractured relationship between Carola and Missy. All three women were strong female protagonists. The conversations about expectations of what a woman should be and/or want were ...
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 3
Missy
We are dripping in America by the middle of the tour and feeling pretty good about ourselves. I'm in an airfield outside Baltimore, playing my f***ing heart out. The crowds are stomping. Hands crushing beer cups. Arms raised in group awe. When the audience is with us, we own them. Their love is embarrassing and beautiful but also crazy to fathom. Here we are, the Swearwolves, a bunch of music-school geeks, but now we're all so f***able. And I love us. My tits through a thin T-shirt that reads the Bite tour are on the cover of Spin magazine. I'm not even sick to death of half the new songs yet. When we reach the end of the set and Billy says our names, introducing us one by one, I fall in love with everyone, even when Tom prolongs the drum solo to a masturbatory length.
And there is James. I want James. He's in the front row, which is where I first met him. He's that record store guy at every show, hanging around so much he's genuinely friends with the band. He has an adoring face, a hot interrogation light, but a flattering one. His hair is golden, curled downbelow his shoulders. But he hasn't been front and center since New York last year.
Near the end of our set, the crowd is a hungry mass and we are feeding them. I'm playing rhythm guitar for this song, and I kick out my leg toward James. He gives me a wink. I can feel the way he likes to wrap one hand around my hair and pull gently, and then with force. As we hold each other's gaze, I'm briefly alight, floating above the sold-out crowd.
The gender split in the major live music scene is a little like the army, a woman here and there, but mostly you are on your own. There's no one to borrow a tampon from, and the girls my bandmates hook up with aren't ever around long enough to get too deep. You have to watch your back, or try to make the most of it. I didn't want to be prey, and so I became a type of predator, a slinking she-wolf bathed in gin and audience adoration with a boy in nearly every port. The boy in Baltimore was James, though he'd been my East Village hookup for about a year and a half. James rips off his T-shirt. He screams the chorus. He bangs his fist on the edge of the stage. The teenage girls in the front row don't know what to make of his frenzy.
I was a shy kid in high school. I didn't even try a sip of beer until after my eighteenth birthday. And here I am, a few years after graduation, taking a full-year break from the conservatory, and there's my photo in Rolling Stone, backstage with Kim Deal at a festival. Our first solo tour feels like the endless present. People aren't just recognizing Billy when we pull into rest stops, or in the aisles of CVS picking up hand lotion and condoms. They know who I am. I hear my own voice over the radio sometimes. It's a rush. I get cocky. We all do. It's so easy to see a clear story in retrospect, but in the middle of it, all I feel is hands and mouths, Sharpies thrust forward to sign T-shirts, the sound of applause and the birdlike whoops of those fans in a moment of transcendence, the taste of beer and lemon Snapple, the cold hotel pillow at the end of the night. It's the middle of the orgy, and all we have are feelings, so many feelings, and all of them colossal, creeping through our bodies and messing with our minds.
I play each song without thinking about the notes. Some songs on the cello, others on guitar. I have a tattoo across the knuckles on my left hand that reads more. My father told me it was my first word. In these moments onstage, I am more body than brain, and I don't need my brain to play each note flawlessly. My mind is concerned mostly with two things: how many songs are left before I can see James, and the fat crow sitting on the amplifier. The crow is looking at me too intently. I give him a pacifying nod.
Crows will always remember your face. If you throw an empty coffee cup at a crow, it tells its buddies. They look after their own. They can live for a hundred years. I didn't f*** with the crow. Tom did. By accident. Tom's not an asshole; he just didn't see the crow lounging on the rim of the dumpster before he threw the cup. He's got drummer arms, so the cup went too fast, too hard. Surprised them both.
It stopped raining just before our set. A rainbow cradled in thousands of upturned palms. Shirts were stuck to their chests with rainwater and sweat. I look at my left hand. It's moving along the frets again. If you do something a million times you'll just keep doing it. Even when you're gone. Like when you pull ...
Missy
We are dripping in America by the middle of the tour and feeling pretty good about ourselves. I'm in an airfield outside Baltimore, playing my f***ing heart out. The crowds are stomping. Hands crushing beer cups. Arms raised in group awe. When the audience is with us, we own them. Their love is embarrassing and beautiful but also crazy to fathom. Here we are, the Swearwolves, a bunch of music-school geeks, but now we're all so f***able. And I love us. My tits through a thin T-shirt that reads the Bite tour are on the cover of Spin magazine. I'm not even sick to death of half the new songs yet. When we reach the end of the set and Billy says our names, introducing us one by one, I fall in love with everyone, even when Tom prolongs the drum solo to a masturbatory length.
And there is James. I want James. He's in the front row, which is where I first met him. He's that record store guy at every show, hanging around so much he's genuinely friends with the band. He has an adoring face, a hot interrogation light, but a flattering one. His hair is golden, curled downbelow his shoulders. But he hasn't been front and center since New York last year.
Near the end of our set, the crowd is a hungry mass and we are feeding them. I'm playing rhythm guitar for this song, and I kick out my leg toward James. He gives me a wink. I can feel the way he likes to wrap one hand around my hair and pull gently, and then with force. As we hold each other's gaze, I'm briefly alight, floating above the sold-out crowd.
The gender split in the major live music scene is a little like the army, a woman here and there, but mostly you are on your own. There's no one to borrow a tampon from, and the girls my bandmates hook up with aren't ever around long enough to get too deep. You have to watch your back, or try to make the most of it. I didn't want to be prey, and so I became a type of predator, a slinking she-wolf bathed in gin and audience adoration with a boy in nearly every port. The boy in Baltimore was James, though he'd been my East Village hookup for about a year and a half. James rips off his T-shirt. He screams the chorus. He bangs his fist on the edge of the stage. The teenage girls in the front row don't know what to make of his frenzy.
I was a shy kid in high school. I didn't even try a sip of beer until after my eighteenth birthday. And here I am, a few years after graduation, taking a full-year break from the conservatory, and there's my photo in Rolling Stone, backstage with Kim Deal at a festival. Our first solo tour feels like the endless present. People aren't just recognizing Billy when we pull into rest stops, or in the aisles of CVS picking up hand lotion and condoms. They know who I am. I hear my own voice over the radio sometimes. It's a rush. I get cocky. We all do. It's so easy to see a clear story in retrospect, but in the middle of it, all I feel is hands and mouths, Sharpies thrust forward to sign T-shirts, the sound of applause and the birdlike whoops of those fans in a moment of transcendence, the taste of beer and lemon Snapple, the cold hotel pillow at the end of the night. It's the middle of the orgy, and all we have are feelings, so many feelings, and all of them colossal, creeping through our bodies and messing with our minds.
I play each song without thinking about the notes. Some songs on the cello, others on guitar. I have a tattoo across the knuckles on my left hand that reads more. My father told me it was my first word. In these moments onstage, I am more body than brain, and I don't need my brain to play each note flawlessly. My mind is concerned mostly with two things: how many songs are left before I can see James, and the fat crow sitting on the amplifier. The crow is looking at me too intently. I give him a pacifying nod.
Crows will always remember your face. If you throw an empty coffee cup at a crow, it tells its buddies. They look after their own. They can live for a hundred years. I didn't f*** with the crow. Tom did. By accident. Tom's not an asshole; he just didn't see the crow lounging on the rim of the dumpster before he threw the cup. He's got drummer arms, so the cup went too fast, too hard. Surprised them both.
It stopped raining just before our set. A rainbow cradled in thousands of upturned palms. Shirts were stuck to their chests with rainwater and sweat. I look at my left hand. It's moving along the frets again. If you do something a million times you'll just keep doing it. Even when you're gone. Like when you pull ...
