Girl Imagined by Chance

GIRL IMAGINED BY CHANCE was pure pleasure to read. I admired what Olsen accomplished with this novel. It is the culmination of a lot of right choices.His choice, for instance, of using photography and the social pressures on childless couples to have children as his primary tropes in exploring our culture of reproduction, as well as the nature of memory and reality is simply brilliant. His handling of second person p.o.v. is seamless, never awkward or clumsy. The sentence structures, the paragraph breaks, the repetitions echoing like refrains throughout are inspiring. The language is fresh and surprising, strong from beginning to end.It is intelligent and never predictable. I liked that Olsen went back to what I most loved about BURNT and LIVE FROM EARTH, blending autobiographical details of his life (here at Bear Creek in northern Idaho) and his various travels with the theme of how our lives are basically fictions. In GIRL, Olsen takes his fiction stylistically in a new direction and one can easily view this novel as the culmination of a progressive trilogy, just as TONGUING THE ZEITGEIST, TIME FAMINE and FREAKNEST comprise such a trilogy. The humor beautifully sustains the sense of not taking oneself too seriously, seeing the absurdity without letting it drag you into depression. This novel also helped me understand just what "critifiction" is, as it enfolds much information about photography into the narrative without it ever feeling like an "info dump." This is all made possible because of the "voice" of the novel and the enchantingly human portrait of the fictional Andi. I applaud Fiction Collective Two for publishing this work. They are a vanguard for cutting-edge fiction which may one day break down the artificial barriers keeping writers like Olsen out of the mainstream. C'mon, New York, it's time to reinvent yourself. There are writers out there who can be both intelligent and ENTERTAINING!

Girl Imagined by Chance is a playful, ironic novel about an oddly taboo subject: being married, getting older, and not wanting to have children. It follows a couple as they abandon the climate-controlled, high-rise world of East coast software development for a lone cabin fifty miles west of nowhere, deep in the wilds of Idaho. The story is sewn together with a series of photographs, blurring reality and fiction as the characters find themselves creating a counterfeit daughter to comply with the expectations of their family and friends. The tone is sunny, but the themes are moving and often sad. I found it disturbing and comforting at the same time--a lot like real life. For anyone who's ever fought feelings of guilt for resisting a culture devoted to mall zombies and procreation, or for anyone who has unresolved issues with their own parents, this is an entertaining and satisfying read. (Warning: not for parents who actually enjoy changing poopy diapers.)