Narcissus Ascending

By Karen McKinnon

Book Overview

Becky, Hugh, Dahlia, and Max. Friends who have formed a dysfunctional but necessary surrogate family. Callie, the crisis-prone, vivid, manipulative chameleon whose friendship has damaged them all... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312312180
• ISBN13: 9780312312183
• Release Date: June 2003
• Publisher: Picador USA
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Not the same old thing.

I loved this book. It dares, which is more than I can say for most of the novels I've read in the last few years. Fiction has become all the same thing, seemingly meant to make both writer and read feel good about themselves. This novel isn't about that. McKinnon's writing is alive, her characters are vivid and her story is wickedly fun. Reading the other reviews, it is clear that the author's refusal to tell the reader what to think has [upset] some readers and perplexed others; the smart ones, though, know that she purposely encloses you in the suffocating point of view of a narcissist--here's what it's like to live in the skin of a vain, short-sighted, self-glorifying young woman 24/7--as if to say you'd better watch out, world, or this is what we'll all become. But Becky is not a mouthpiece, she is a character whom McKinnon embodies fully and without flinching. I can't wait to see who and what she'll take on next.

A breath of fresh air

Recently, we've been bombarded by the fiction publishing industry with woman characters that are ambivalent about their independence and obsessed with the desire to be all things to everyone (especially to men). The women of Narcissus Ascending cannot be reduced to these banal caricatures. Instead, Karen McKinnon, in her darkly ironical first novel, gives us two rivalrous characters - Becky and Callie - whose complex, obsessive, self-delusional personalities jumps off the page. The seeming authenticity of these characters makes them fascinating to read about. This is a unique and wonderful book that I highly recommend.

Who needs friends!

I came across this debut novel recently and on cracking open the cover I didn't look up until I had finished all 200 plus pages several hours later. McKinnon's style of writing is impressive and her ability to render the novel's characters into flesh and blood is mind-whirling. The examination of the complexity of friendships that form when self-absorbed people (and aren't we surrounded more and more by them) find each other is sobering...and, I hate to admit it (and so will you), familiar. I can't wait to read more of her writing.

Future Classic

Narcissus Ascending is a great read, and normally that is enough to merit praise, but for me it didn't end there. The story itself touches on a number of modern themes, including that of the struggling artist in the city, the exile that forms a surrogate family in the absence of a real one, and the struggles of youth in forming identity. It can also be read as a cautionary tale of the perils of self-absorption with its paradoxical ingredients of hubris and insecurity. The novel conveys a world that I have never seen depicted elsewhere in contemporary literature with such mesmerizing authenticity. The main characters are four friends who have gathered on the eve of the first solo art exhibition of one of them. Becky, whose work is being shown, is an ambitious, aspiring artist who also serves as the novel's narrator. One person - the manipulative, yet charismatic Callie, had brought all four characters together. Though no longer in the picture, having in stages become estranged from each of them, Callie, nevertheless continues to hover psychologically over each of them. As I said initially, the story itself is gripping and will no doubt appeal to many people simply looking to pickup a good read. As I read, though, I could not help feeling that the qualities of the novel - its structure, language and story - were weaving a sensibility that was more profound. The novel ultimately offers insight into the human condition of the world that we currently inhabit. The characters and their motivations are truly the products of this brave new world and that they could only exist in our time is unmistakable. To simply describe the story in Narcissus Ascending is to not communicate the importance of this concise novel to literature. In much the same way that Woolf or Lawrence used their novels as vehicles for their exploration of contemporary sensibilities, so does McKinnon. While reading Narcissus Ascending, I felt that I had come upon a future classic.

Impressive and compelling

Narcissus Ascending is a sylistic masterpiece, uniquely and successfully capturing the damaged identities of a group of people who cannot be complete without each other. The author has an incredible grasp of group psychodynamics and knowledge of art. The writing is sheer poetry. I couldn't put it down and I could not disagree more with the Publishers Weekly review. The ending is deliberately NOT melodramatic.