The Shame, Makenna Goodman's brooding debut novel, gives voice to a woman who has left the bustle and consumerism of city life to live off the land and nurture her children--and hates it. Her story is one idealized in many other books (think Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle), but her experience doesn't mirror those myths. Despite her supposedly idyllic Vermont country life, Alma's isolated navel-gazing leads her to a desolate place emotionally:
"Yes, I felt invisible. I didn't have anything to show for myself except my kids, and the older they got, the more themselves they became, while I grew more and more servile, adhering always to their changing needs.... I was worried I'd have nothing to say."
In the hours she steals for herself late at night, she begins to write. She finds inspiration in Celeste, a social media personality living in New York City with a seemingly environmentally friendly, culturally rich life complete with young children and fulfilling work. Soon, Alma is obsessed.
The Shame is told entirely in deep first-person perspective, sinking readers into Alma's small joys and the well of her increasingly dark introspection. Yes, Goodman is telling a story of an escape-to-the-country gone wrong and of Alma's harmful fascination with the entirely cultivated perfect life of a stranger, but perhaps the message here is that one truly can spend too much time in their own head. Alma's self-indulgence and privileged frustration are oddly reassuring at times. Readers will be able to see themselves in her flaws, her good intentions and the spaces in between. --Suzanne Krohn, editor, Love in Panels