All Souls
AuthorChristine Schutt
CountryUnited States
Publication date
2008

All Souls is a 2008 novel by American writer Christine Schutt. The book takes place in New York City, and follows the lives of faculty and students at the fictional Siddons School.[1]

Writing and composition

The novel draws from Schutt's experience as a teacher at an all-girls school in Manhattan.[2] Since the book's publication, Schutt noted "types" from the school, Nightingale-Bamford, she would include if she were to rewrite it.[3]

All Souls was in part inspired by David Malouf's novel Remembering Babylon.[2] Despite perception that the novel "[pushes] the boundaries of fiction"[4] Schutt has said she did not intend for it to do so.[3]

Plot

The novel follows Astra Dell and her classmates at Siddons School over the course of their senior year.

Reception

Critical reception

Maud Casey, writing for the New York Times, referred to the novel as "refreshingly strange".[4] Casey compared the novel favorably to the work of Virginia Woolf, whose novels Schutt references in All Souls.[4] Publishers Weekly criticized Schutt for not "[doing] enough with the familiar prep school setting to make the story resonate".[5]

In a review of Schutt's depiction of marriages, David Winters referred to the book's omniscient narrator as "[...] lending a sense of distance" to the novel, in contrast with her earlier Nightwork, which featured first person narration.[6]

Honors

All Souls was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[7][8]

References

  1. ^ Knight, Michael (30 April 2019). "On the Literary Pitfalls of Writing About the Young and Rich". LitHub. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
  2. ^ a b Unferth, Deb Olin (1 May 2009). "Correspondence with Christine Schutt". Believer Magazine (62). Retrieved 29 December 2020.
  3. ^ a b Burke, Michelle Y. (14 October 2012). "An Interview with Christine Schutt | HTMLGIANT". htmlgiant.com. HMTLGiant. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
  4. ^ a b c Casey, Maud (29 August 2008). "My So-Called Death (Published 2008)". The New York Times. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
  5. ^ "All Souls". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
  6. ^ Winters, David (19 December 2012). "Difficult Intimacies: Christine Schutt's Dark Portraits of Marriage". Los Angeles Review of Books. The Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
  7. ^ "Finalist: All Souls, by Christine Schutt (Harcourt)". www.pulitzer.org. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
  8. ^ Charles, Charles (20 November 2012). "Book World: It's unhappily ever after in Christine Schutt's 'Prosperous Friends'". The Washington Post. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
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