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The BookBrowse Review
The BookBrowse Review
Published February 12, 2025
ISSN: 1930-0018
The BookBrowse Review
Published February 12, 2025
ISSN: 1930-0018
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Literary Fiction
Historical Fiction
Short Stories
Essays
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Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
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A gorgeously written and irresistibly intimate queer novel that follows one family across four generations to explore legacy and identity in all its forms.
In 1910, Agnes Carter makes the wrong choice in marriage. After years as an independent woman of fortune, influential with the board of a prominent university because of her financial donations, she is now subject to the whims of an abusive, spendthrift husband. But when Bohemian naturalist and glassblower Ignace Novak reignites Agnes's passion for science, Agnes begins to imagine a different life, and she sets her mind to getting it.
Agnes's desperate actions breed secrecy, and the resulting silence echoes into the future. Her son, Edward, wants to be a man of faith but struggles with the complexities of the mortal world while apprenticing at a stained-glass studio.
In 1986, Edward's child, Novak-just Novak-is an acrobatic window washer cleaning Manhattan high-rises, who gets caught up in the plight of Cecily, a small town girl remade as a gender-bending Broadway ingénue.
And in 2015, Cecily's daughter Flip-a burned-out stoner trapped in a bureaucratic job firing cremains into keepsake glass ornaments-resolves to break the cycle of inherited secrets, reaching back through the generations in search of a family legacy that feels true.
For readers of Mary Beth Keane, Min Jin Lee, and Rebecca Makkai, Glassworks is "an era-spanning, family and chosen-family following, marvel of a debut." (CJ Hauser, author of Family of Origin)
one
The Bohemian glass modeler went mad the summer of Agnes's marriage, and naturally at first society and the university board and Agnes's husband assumed a connection.
They had been so often thrown together, since Ignace had come to Boston. Since Agnes had brought him to Boston. It was nearly as if she had captained the ship herself, according to gossip and political cartoonists. Really it was her money that had done it. Dollar-green paper hands crewing the vessel, packing Ignace Novak's valises, shuttering his studio in Prague—and installing him in Cambridge with shelves of glass and enamel and a foot-powered bellows to melt it and a shotgun-startled expression on his face, hat knocked back as if by a blow, hair frazzled with the grease of his sudden voyage.
Agnes had long since learned what money could do, for better and for worse. It could tangle people into hopeless snarls, or spin them into neat skeins according to her specifications. It took skill to wield such a tool safely. Agnes's father had recognized that skill in her, and left her in control of the family finances. An unusual arrangement, but there was precedent.
If it had had a genotype, their fortune would have been of the female sex. Its ancestral beginnings had been amassed by a colonial she-merchant named Prudence Smith, already twice widowed when she engaged Agnes's great-great-grandmother Elizabeth as a maidservant in the 1760s. Eventually Elizabeth had held a kind of combined position, as both a social companion and the steward of Prudence's business affairs. She had lived in a suite of rooms in the Smith mansion until she married; after, she kept house with her husband but worked out of a shared office above Prudence's dry-goods store. Altogether the two women were associated for decades, spanning the birth of the nation—and when she passed, Prudence had willed her fortune and her business both to Elizabeth.
It was not such a terrible scandal—the widow had been childless and solitary, and Agnes's ancestor by that point both business partner and devoted friend.
She was rather more than that, in fact. Agnes had found the letters when she had the roof raised on their town house. Over a century old, hidden under an attic floorboard, was a bundle of correspondence from Prudence to Agnes's great-great-grandmother—from the latter days of their association, shortly before Prudence's death. Some were dense, frankly boring accounts of goods bought and sold, ledgers and inventory. Others seemed to reference the widow's illness, the fortune shortly to pass to Elizabeth. "Take care of the business," Prudence had ended one letter in cramped but confident script; "it is yours." A flourish on that word so emphatic there was a tear in the paper.
And some letters had referenced business not at all. Agnes now knew much about her ancestor that more formal records could not reveal: that she had had eyes deep and gray-green as the sea; hair the color and texture of honey (or wheat, or sunlight—Prudence often returned to the subject); a port-wine birthmark high on one thigh. There were no copies of Elizabeth's responses, so Agnes could not divine her feelings precisely—but Prudence's letters had been neatly wrapped in chintz and tied with a bow that had lasted over a century.
The first letter in the packet, dated just after Elizabeth's marriage, had been a feverish kind of nuptial congratulation. "Stephen is a good man, and you deserve him," Prudence had written. "You deserve more, too. Save a part for yourself, and another for me." There followed suggestions as to which parts Prudence would prefer.
Agnes had shown the letters to her mother, who promptly burned them. A misplaced panic, Agnes thought—given the ways of the world (she could list a dozen local scholars and gentlemen of parallel inclinations); given that Providence had by all accounts bestowed an approving smile on Prudence and Elizabeth; given that it was all in ...
Excerpted from Glassworks by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith. Copyright © 2023 by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith. Excerpted by permission of Bloomsbury USA. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Olivia Wolfgang-Smith's novel Glassworks is an incandescent debut that follows the lives of four people on the brink of metamorphosis. We first meet Agnes in 1910, a wealthy young woman eager to commission glass teaching models of plants for her university's biology department (see Beyond the Book). She hires Czech artist Ignace for the job, luring him away from his home country in spite of the university board's reluctance, with consequences neither character can anticipate. The plot then skips to 1938, shifting to the story of Agnes' son, 18-year-old Edward, as he struggles to find his place in the world. Another jump moves the action forward to 1986 where 47-year-old Novak finds herself taking care of her elderly, disabled father, while simultaneously trying to give her own life shape and meaning. And lastly, we meet Flip, who in 2015 can't seem to find love and acceptance even within her own family.
The book reads like four interconnected, sequential novellas. With each new section, the perspective changes completely and the voice that was the focus of the preceding chapter is silenced. The connecting thread between them is glass, with each character's life revolving around the medium in some way (e.g., Edward seeks to work in the stained-glass industry while Novak washes the windows of New York's skyscrapers). But glass also serves as a metaphor for each of their lives; it's a material that can be shaped into objects of great beauty and resiliency, yet it's fragile—something that can be shattered by ill-treatment. It can be clear or opaque, cool or warm, simple or complex. We see all its many attributes reflected through the lives of Agnes, Edward, Novak and Flip.
The author brilliantly explores complex themes through her characters, in particular discussing questions of family—who is our family? What do we owe them, and what do they owe us? Glassworks shows how little adult children understand about their parents. At one point Edward sits in Boston's Carter Plaza wondering if his parents ever saw it, not knowing his mother's family commissioned it. He thinks to himself, "They hadn't even had to try…If they had, they'd understand how it felt to struggle, or to worry about impressing the right people." Readers know from the previous section that nothing could be farther from the truth, and this gulf between parent and child feels at once familiar and heartbreaking. The book also touches on ideas of hardship and resiliency. Discussion of topics such as spousal abuse, mental health, alcoholism and the AIDS crisis question how we react to adversity—will we overcome it, or be buried by it?
In addition to a marvelously multi-layered plot, Wolfgang-Smith's characters are drawn superbly, and her prose is as luminous as the glass about which she writes. There are resonances scattered throughout, echoes readers intuit but of which the characters themselves are oblivious (Novak loves a window she's working on because it's "cloudy with life like a turbid sea" while Edward's favorite stained glass evokes the waters around Noah's ark). This novel is as close to perfect as any I can recall; I'm astonished this is the author's debut work.
My only caveat about the book is that each section ends rather abruptly, generally in the midst of a crisis. One character may have died at the end of their chapter, for example, and readers don't know that person's fate until a casual mention many pages later. I have never encountered a novel with so many unresolved plotlines. Normally that would be a deal-breaker for me (I confess I like my plots wrapped up neatly). However, in the context of this novel the technique really works, emphasizing the disconnect between generations. It serves to highlight what a remarkable author Wolfgang-Smith is; the book really knocked my socks off.
In short, I can't recommend Glassworks highly enough. Readers looking for a well-written work of literary fiction – particularly those hoping for something a little different – will definitely want to put this one on their list. It would also make an excellent choice for book groups.
Reviewed by Kim Kovacs
Cara Blue Adams, author of You Never Get It Back
CJ Hauser, author of Family of Origin
Jennine Capó Crucet, author of Make Your Home Among Strangers
Olivia Wolfgang-Smith's novel Glassworks begins with the heroine employing a Czech glass artist to create a collection of realistic flora and fauna for her university in Boston. In interviews, the author has stated that she was inspired by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, a father-and-son team who created thousands of remarkably detailed biological models in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Leopold Blaschka (1822-1895) was born into a glassworking family that traced its roots in the craft back to 15th century Vienna. Although as a child he dreamed of being a painter, he was apprenticed to a jewelry maker and gem cutter, eventually joining his father in the family glass business. He cut his teeth in the trade creating costume jewelry and glass eyes for those needing a prosthetic as well as taxidermists. Over time, Leopold became incredibly skilled at lampwork, a technique whereby glass rods are heated (originally over an oil lamp, but by Leopold's day alcohol was used as fuel) and then, once the material is soft, pulled into the desired shape. He took over the enterprise on his father's death in 1851.
Leopold began making glass plants for his own amusement sometime around 1857. History doesn't record how, but these creations came to the notice of Prince Camille de Rohan, a horticultural enthusiast who'd created a world-famous garden at one of his estates. He befriended Leopold and often provided him with tropical plants from his greenhouses for study. More importantly, he introduced the glassmaker to Professor Ludwig Reichenbach, the director of the Natural History Museum in Dresden. Impressed with Leopold's work, Reichenbach commissioned him to make a collection of glass sea anemones in 1863 . Other museum directors took notice of the remarkably detailed creations, and additional contracts followed. Soon Leopold's works were being sold to museums worldwide and manufacturing glass sea invertebrates became his primary business. His son Rudolf began collaborating with him in 1870 and became a full partner in 1876.
Meanwhile, in the United States, Professor George Lincoln Goodale, the first director of Harvard's Botanical Museum, was searching for an aid to help him instruct his students about the anatomy of flowers. Models of the day were inadequate; pressed specimens were two-dimensional and crumbled over time, while the three-dimensional versions made from papier-mâché or wax lacked detail. Goodale saw a few of the Blaschkas' invertebrates at an exhibition hosted by Harvard's natural history department and decided to travel to Dresden in 1886 to see if the business could make flowers as well. He commissioned a few sample pieces, and although they were broken in transit, the items were nevertheless impressive.
Goodale enlisted a talented pupil named Mary Ware to convince her mother Elizabeth to fund a collection of the Blaschkas' flowers. Elizabeth agreed, dedicating the collection in memory of her late husband, Charles Eliot Ware.
The Blaschkas were at first reluctant to sign a contract with Harvard. Their business was thriving and the university project would mean cutting back on their work for other institutions. They were ultimately convinced, however, and from 1887-1890 they split their time between creating Harvard's flowers and sea creatures for other clients; in late 1890 they signed a 10-year contract, agreeing to work exclusively on Harvard's pieces. In 1895, Leopold died, and Rudolf continued the project alone. Over 50 years, the Blaschkas produced some 4,400 glass models representing more than 830 plant species for the university's collection. In addition to flowers, the duo produced glassworks representing diseased fruit, the insect pollination of plants, and the life cycles of ferns and fungi.
The flowers themselves remain marvels of creation, and when one looks at them it's nearly impossible to believe they're made of glass. And yet, Leopold claimed he used no special techniques in creating his works, crediting their beauty to his long family history in the trade as well as an attention to detail. Modern experts continue to admire their accuracy; no scientist has been able to find fault in any of the pieces.
Harvard's collection remains the largest and best-known compilation of the Blaschkas' work. Known officially as the Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants or, more commonly, The Glass Flowers, it's permanently housed in the Harvard Natural History Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Photograph of a glass apple blossom in the Glass Flowers Gallery at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. This image belongs to the Digital Collection of the Harvard University Herbaria.
Filed under Music and the Arts
By Kim Kovacs
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