Synopsis of Unfinished: A Novel
When V.E. Clark published her first novel at the age of 24, the literary world was captivated by both her talent and the beautiful author’s photo on the book’s back cover. But after a decade of acclaim and controversy, V.E. suddenly disappeared — ending a much-publicized relationship with a fellow novelist, moving from New York to small-town Connecticut, and marrying a man she barely knew. In the last five years, she has refused all interview requests.
When it is revealed that Clark is dying from cancer, her publishers send Alice, a well-known biographer, to delve into her complicated life and to discover whether V.E. plans to publish the much talked about novel she’s been working on — even though she might die before it’s complete. As Alice digs into her past, it’s revealed that V.E. will be leaving many things in her life unfinished.
Unfinished’s unique form is inspired by the formal inventiveness of books like Cloud Atlas, Lincoln in the Bardo, How to Be Both, and If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. Each chapter pays homage to both an unfinished novel or work of art, and a historical or current experimental technique. As the novel progresses, the experimental techniques find engaging ways to play with the form of the novel and imagine new directions or forgotten paths for fiction. This playful energy owes a debt to works like Ulysses by James Joyce, N.W. by Zadie Smith, The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, and Ava by Carole Maso.
Ultimately, Unfinished is a meditation on female literary celebrity and the imperfections of life as well as all things unfinished in life, and in novels. It’s a love letter to the experimental tradition that believes the novel is ‘unfinished’ in its evolution and which keeps the form alive, vibrant, and forever changing, and it is an elegy to the great unfinished novels which captivate us with both what’s on the page and what might have been written. While the book explores and mourns the unrealized potential of the incomplete and unresolved, it also celebrates the beauty and open-endedness of unfinished works and lives.
About The Author:
A .H. Reaume is a writer who swears too much, reads too much, and is currently in too many book clubs (four in total). She has won multiple awards for her feminist activism and is even mentioned in a textbook about Canadian women’s history. Reaume has an MA in Canadian Literature from the University of British Columbia and has been published in the Vancouver Sun, The Globe and Mail, USAToday.com, and Time.com. She lives in Vancouver.