Glassworks

by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith

Overview

A gorgeously written and irresistibly intimate queer novel that follows one family across four generations to explore legacy and identity in all its forms.

Longlisted for the Center for Fiction and VCU Cabell First Novel Prizes
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Apple, and Good Housekeeping

“So deeply imagined and immersive that reading it felt like an invitation: Shatter what needs to be shattered and mold your story from what's left . . . I needed this novel, both for its cathartic devastation and the hope found in its wreckage.” ?The New York Times

“Kaleidoscopic in its sweep, without sentimentality or showiness . . . Glassworks warrants our attention and our admiration. With its gripping turns and subtle prose, it is a near-perfect debut.” ?Washington Post

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.

With "gripping turns and subtle prose" (The Washington Post), Glassworks is a sophisticated debut that holds you in its thrall until the last page.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781635578782
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	05/16/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith is the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Longlisted author of GLASSWORKS and MUTUAL INTEREST. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida State University and lives in Brooklyn with her spouse.
Olivia Wolfgang-Smith is the author of Glassworks, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She is a 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Fiction from The New York Foundation for the Arts and lives in Brooklyn with her partner.

Editorial Reviews

03/20/2023

Wolfgang-Smith contends with vocation, identity, and the meaning of family in her appealing debut. The first of four sections takes place in 1910 Boston, where heiress Agnes Carter marries an unscrupulous and abusive man and becomes enamored of a brilliant but volatile sculptor named Ignace Novak, whom she’s hired to produce glass models of flora and fauna. In 1938, Agnes’s son, Edward, longs to pursue a religious career, but lacks the required theological background, then stumbles into a career making liturgical stained glass. In the 1980s, Edward’s gender fluid offspring, Novak, works as a window cleaner in New York City. After Novak is dragged reluctantly to a Broadway performance, Novak becomes besotted with Cecily, a captivating, gender-bending swing performer. The novel’s final section, set in 2015, focuses on Cecily’s daughter, known as “Flip,” who lives miserably in the closet-size spare room of her ex-girlfriend’s apartment because she can’t afford to move out. Flip works at a start-up that creates glass paperweights out of cremains, where a co-worker encourages her to look into her mysterious given name—Novak—and the glass bee heirloom she once thought was just a trinket. As the various threads tie together, the author makes clever use of her central metaphor, considering glass as sharp, fluid, changeable, and even surprising—much like the characters she depicts. This is a radiant exploration of a complex legacy. Agent: Danielle Bukowski, Sterling Lord Literistic. (May)

Publishers Weekly

So deeply imagined and immersive that reading it felt like an invitation . . . I needed this novel, both for its cathartic devastation and the hope found in its wreckage.” —New York Times Book Review

“Captivating . . . Glassworks warrants our attention and our admiration. With its gripping turns and subtle prose, it is a near-perfect debut.” —The Washington Post

“A twisty tale of love, chosen family, hard choices and harder people that picks up speed as it goes, careening breathlessly toward the last page.” —Good Housekeeping, Best Books of 2023 So Far

“A wonderful, wonderful book.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

“Olivia Wolfgang-Smith's first novel is a generation-spanning epic of family, inheritance, and identity . . . With richly drawn characters and deft storytelling, Glassworks is a beautifully crafted, memorable debut.” —Booklist, Starred Review

“Wolfgang-Smith's writing - a heady blend of rich descriptions and discerning insights - makes [Glassworks] a striking read.” —WBUR.org

“In Olivia Wolfgang-Smith's emotive novel Glassworks, four generations struggle under the weight of unexpressed feelings, unsaid words, and unmet needs … Always, there is a Novak at the center of the story, reaching with breathless anticipation for happiness, stability, comfort, and forgiveness. Glassworks is a layered, lyrical family saga about love and determination.” —Foreword Reviews

“Wolfgang-Smith contends with vocation, identity, and the meaning of family in her appealing debut… As the various threads tie together, the author makes clever use of her central metaphor, considering glass as sharp, fluid, changeable, and even surprising-much like the characters she depicts. This is a radiant exploration of a complex legacy.” —Publishers Weekly

“[Glassworks] is a captivating and warm epic.” —Debutiful, Can't-Miss Debut Books You Should Read in May

“A moving queer family saga following found family and blood family, and what happens when buried secrets come to light.” —Town & Country, The 38 Must-Read Books of Spring 2023

“A page turner, a work of gorgeous prose, a rollicking good story full of brilliant observations about the human experience and characters I sometimes forget I do not know in real life. ... If Elizabeth McCracken and David Mitchell had a love child, it might look a bit like this era-spanning, family and chosen-family following, marvel of a debut.” —CJ Hauser, author of FAMILY OF ORIGIN

“Rendered in achingly gorgeous prose, Glassworks sweeps across generations, forging an engrossing portrait of a complex inheritance-a wise and inventive debut.” —Jennine Capó Crucet, author of MAKE YOUR HOME AMONG STRANGERS

“ With warmth, vividness, and humor, Wolfgang-Smith examines what we inherit and what is lost to silence and shows us how people come into themselves alongside the fragile legacies they build. A dazzling new voice.” —Cara Blue Adams, author of YOU NEVER GET IT BACK

“An astonishing multigenerational saga from a once-in-a-generation talent.” —Jake Wolff, author of THE HISTORY OF LIVING FOREVER

“In her brilliant and expansive debut, Glassworks, Olivia Wolfgang-Smith opens a window into the lives of four individuals separated across time and bound together by blood and vocation-here, glass is science, an art, an obstacle, a means for income, and the preserver of mystery. As these characters search for purpose and reason in their specific timelines, Wolfgang-Smith guides them with an empathetic eye, allowing them to act with pure heart and gumption, and daring readers to do the same. A refreshing, queer novel packed with found families, buried secrets, and intricate imagery, Glassworks is-simply put-stunning.” —Christopher Gonzalez, author of I'M NOT HUNGRY BUT I COULD EAT

“Olivia Wolfgang-Smith's debut is delicate, elegant, and timeless. Reminiscent of novels by Sarah Schulman and Michael Cunningham, Glassworks is a charming, tender examination of human foibles and the story of a remarkable family - lost, found, and chosen.” —Rafe Posey, author of THE STARS WE SHARE

“Beautifully written … [Glassworks] examines the way both pain and beauty can be passed down through generations, as well as the way family bonds can be chosen.” —Them, 7 Queer Book Sagas to Lose Yourself In

From the Publisher

Katherine Littrell gives an operatic and beautifully detailed performance of this gorgeous debut. Told in four distinct sections, it follows four generations of one family from 1910 through 2015. Through complicated specific characters, Wolfgang-Smith explores themes of inheritance, silence, trauma, and queerness, tracking what gets passed down between parents and children and what gets lost. Littrell creates unique personas for every character--from the gentle, softly accented lilt of a Bohemian glassblower in 1910 to the brash, rough-edged voice of a middle-aged window washer in 1880s New York. Her performance feels like a kind of time travel as she brings each place and time period to life. Her expert narration captures all the emotional nuances of this unusually structured family saga. L.S. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2023 - AudioFile

Katherine Littrell gives an operatic and beautifully detailed performance of this gorgeous debut. Told in four distinct sections, it follows four generations of one family from 1910 through 2015. Through complicated specific characters, Wolfgang-Smith explores themes of inheritance, silence, trauma, and queerness, tracking what gets passed down between parents and children and what gets lost. Littrell creates unique personas for every character--from the gentle, softly accented lilt of a Bohemian glassblower in 1910 to the brash, rough-edged voice of a middle-aged window washer in 1880s New York. Her performance feels like a kind of time travel as she brings each place and time period to life. Her expert narration captures all the emotional nuances of this unusually structured family saga. L.S. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2023 - AudioFile

★ 2023-03-14
This sophisticated debut from Wolfgang-Smith traces an evolving emotional legacy through four generations of a family while examining the basic question of "how to love something without letting it have everything."

Glass—sometimes transparent, sometimes opaque, both sturdy and fragile—serves as the novel’s primary metaphor while anchoring its plot. Characters sometimes see each other with joyous clarity but often with distortions or not at all. In 1910, Boston socialite Agnes Carter renounces wealth and respectability (and perhaps her moral compass) for glass blower Ignace Novak, drawn to his talent, passion, and lucidity. The glass bee he gives Agnes will thread its way through the novel, a small detail of growing resonance, a lovely merging of image, theme, and plot. In 1938, Edward Novak knows nothing of his parents’ past. Stung more by their disinterest than their disappointment in him, the 18-year-old leaves their Chicago home to apprentice at a stained-glass studio in “their least favorite city,” Boston. He fails at stained glass but finds love, unaware that his sympathetic girlfriend, a rebellious daughter desperate to escape her wealthy, overbearing family, offers a skewed mirror of his indifferent mother. With AIDS as the backdrop in 1986 New York, the failed attempts of high-rise window washer Novak (given name Pamela, but known just as Novak) and her disabled father, Ed, to understand each other’s affection are heart-rending. At 47, wary loner Novak becomes unexpectedly captivated—“not lust but recognition,” she explains—by Cecily, a young actress whose commitment to her art form offers another off-kilter mirroring, this time of equally obsessive if more gifted Ignace. Novak’s misguided effort to reunite Cecily with her parents ends disastrously. Almost 30 years later, Cecily’s daughter, Flip, working for a company incorporating cremains into small glass sculptures, feels unloved and bullied by her family, a co-worker, and an ex-lover until she begins to understand that “people didn’t know things unless you told them.” Wolfgang-Smith writes like a glass blower, patiently building and enhancing to create durable beauty.

Simply put, this is a wonderful, wonderful book.

Kirkus Reviews