The fact that Sophie Pattinson loves books is somewhat misleading. The protagonist of Meg Mason’s new novel, Sophie, Standing There is surrounded by them, or the idea of them, at all times—as a tech working prestigious literary festivals, she’s been the one to mic the authors (or “The Talent,” as she wryly describes) before they go onstage. They see nothing in Sophie, but she sees everything in them. And when her boss asks for suggestions as to who to put in next year’s lineup, Sophie off-handedly suggests Lilac Dunne, an actress-turned author whose seven books Sophie had read before but not in a while. When she stops by her local independent bookstore, the workers—who know her by name—say that Dunne’s got a new one coming out, and would Sophie like to have a read?
Dunne’s reintroduction in Sophie’s life is sorely needed. She’s recently separated from her husband, a man named Paul who politely asked Sophie to leave his home while she was in the shower, his body blocking the towel warmer nearby. She’s ignoring the texts from her best friend, Emma, who she sees as childish for enjoying young adult literature. Her brother, Laurie, is a fellow bookworm, but his wife, Jo, is on the simple side. Needless to say, it’s a good time for Sophie to rediscover what had previously made her light up.
She devours the novel (pretentiously titled Human Beings), downloads every podcast Lilac has done, even masturbates to the sound of her voice. She begins hearing said voice in her head like a built-in therapist, often reciting smug lines she’s told hosts. “If you profess to be a lover of fiction but own a leaf blower,” she says, “I promise, there is a writer living near you whose life you are destroying.” The internal Lilac is warm, forgiving, to Sophie, gently probing but not pushy. “Talk to me,” Lilac says after a work dispute, “I’m yours.”
Sorrow and Bliss is much better than Sophie, Standing There, but the latter might be pricklier.
It’s a complex time at her gig, despite overseeing several famous authors. Mason namedrops left and right; despite her disclaimer at the start that all events were fictional, Jojo Moyes allegedly needed buckets of water while on stage to keep her throat ready to speak and Sophie particularly dislikes Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. Apart from managing The Talent, who can be arrogant, she’s also politely trying to diversify the workplace—her white guilt has her haggling over what makes a microphone “skin colored,” though she does have an astute point in the chairs that the company employs on stage. (The current ones are too tall for women writers, who are, on average, shorter than men, and to sit comfortably, dangle their legs and sit up straight, creating the appearance of deference to the men, who, while they speak, might be manspreading, relaxed, and appear to take whatever the woman is saying lackadaisically—not a bad idea.) Her quest for DEI Ikea chairs is shafted after she texts Emma asking for a ride, and Emma, who has sent multiple unanswered texts to Sophie, sniffs her out.
But her biggest problem—apart from her new bumped-up role as a director after the previous one got giardia after drinking Cambodian sea water—waits. Elizabeth Strout, that year’s festival headliner, is suddenly unable to make it, and they’re swapping in Lilac Dunne. Instead of joy—she’s spent the past months with Lilac—Sophie is stressed, trying to plead that she had been joking with the director, she didn’t really want Lilac to come. Lilac’s arrival terrifies her, because in this new gig, Sophie’s not just anybody to The Talent—she’s their guardian angels. Lilac will see through her desperate obsession to find out who she really is.
Despite Sophie’s reluctance, Dunne arrives, gorgeous and stern, Cuskian in her flip motivations and writing—she has a trilogy of books about divorce, though they’re novels. The day of her event is a Curb Your Enthusiasm-esque boat of humiliations for Sophie, who must tug off her expensive trousers in the bathroom to give to Lilac, whose publicist spills soup on hers. Stuck in the stall with nothing to wear, she misses the whole event, but then later runs into Lilac, who asks—really, demands, that Sophie have dinner with her.
Sophie is reluctant—you can’t get too close to the sun, after all. They have a long dinner, and hang out the next day, and the day after that. Lilac won’t have it, and reassures that she is a woman of her own agency and she wouldn’t do anything she didn’t want to. “I need you to do something for me,” she instructs Sophie, who has been invited to where Lilac is staying, ostensibly to drop off the pants which she’s scrubbed free of soup. Sophie brings up her husband, only to hedge and squirm when Lilac implores, saying it’s boring. “I need you not to decide for me what’s boring and what is not. You are not boring. Nothing about this is boring. If you were boring, I would tell you.” Still, Sophie redirects.
Lilac’s blunt vision cuts through her conversations, which might have been like pulling teeth for the two women, but usually flow on the page. Lilac sees Sophie, and her desire to connect with somebody, despite her reluctance in meeting one of her favorite authors. She is, after all, Sophie, standing there, just waiting for something to come along to happen to her. Sophie’s inagency starts to grate on the reader and Lilac herself, who gets increasingly bold as she moves to spend even more time with Sophie, spilling out the idea for her new novel and even has Sophie play-act as her assistant, typing out a narrative while she speaks. In only a couple days, they become entwined, with Sophie even calling out of work. (Lilac says she’ll phone her boss.)
The Cusk comparison, which started in my mind early with mention of Lilac’s poise and her elegant books, spun out as Sophie, Standing There continued. Cusk is in the middle of a literary kerfuffle via Life of M, a void-of-character novel that people have assumed to be about the actress Natalie Portman. In Life of M, a famous actress asks the narrator to write a biography of her life, and the actress (and some reviewers) later accused the narrator (and Cusk) of profiting off of one person’s story while the other suffers for it. (Portman, mirroring the book, is reportedly upset.) Novelistic interpretation or hit job?
This beef came to mind in Sophie, Standing There as Lilac’s interest in Sophie turned from friendly to questionable. The two women’s thinking about each other take on new angles—Sophie, with romance, and Lilac, with an eye for new material. “This is what I do with who I am,” she writes Sophie at one point. When Sophie reveals that she had a cult-like upbringing, Lilac needles to investigate even further; Sophie allows this and even floats the suggestion of traveling to see it. But where it really gets dicey, the one moment that would make headway and avoiding intangible chat—Sophie shuts down. She texts Lilac that she doesn’t want to, and Lilac gives her the cold shoulder.
Sorrow and Bliss is much better than Sophie, Standing There, but the latter might be pricklier. Was Sophie taken advantage of? Did the specter of someone powerful allow her to open herself up, when she’d clearly been so closed off ever since her separation? Was there anything wrong with Lilac pursuing Sophie as a person of inquiry, despite her callous way of going about it? What about Sophie internalizing her novels so that when the real author showed up, she saw her as higher and holier than a fellow person? The novel has a slow start, but her spinning out when Lilac leaves proves that Sophie wasn’t in the right headspace to be visited (and interrogated) by someone who had absolute impunity. What would have happened if Sophie allowed Lilac to visit the farm? It would have been narratively compelling, but something tells me Sophie cut the relationship at the legs when she needed to most—though it’s at the detriment to the book.
Sophie, Standing There is a puzzle. What started as a sleepy book about the love of literature turned into something resembling a Rorschach of consent, power, romance and the parasocial nature of celebrity friendships. As a follow-up to Sorrow and Bliss, it does leave something to be desired in the strength of its writing and memorability, but it really is like a jawbreaker of complicated situations—a shame that most of the novel’s depth revealed itself only after I put the book down.
Sophie, Standing There is out now.
