Title: It Is Wood, It Is Stone Author: Gabriella Burnham
Published: July 28, 2020
Genre(s): Literary Fiction
Page Count: 224
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Linda, an anxious and restless American, has moved to São Paulo, with her husband, Dennis, who has accepted a yearlong professorship. As Dennis submerges himself in his work, Linda finds herself unmoored and adrift, feeling increasingly disassociated from her own body. Linda’s unwavering and skilled maid, Marta, has more claim to Linda’s home than Linda can fathom. Marta, who is struggling to make sense of complicated history and its racial tensions, is exasperated by Linda’s instability. One day, Linda leaves home with a charismatic and beguiling artist, whom she joins on a fervent adventure that causes reverberations felt by everyone, and ultimately binds Marta and Linda in a profoundly human, and tender, way.
Gabriella Burnham’s first novel, It Is Wood, It Is Stone is perfectly written. With prose that perfectly evokes every emotion and shift in its narrator, this book explores one woman’s quiet, internal crisis that leads her to have an affair. The problem? Though billed as a story about race, class, and sexism in Brazil, these issues are really just a backdrop to the white protagonist’s problems. At its core, It Is Wood, It Is Stone is the story about a bored, aimless white American ex-pat searching for meaning, and it uses the lives of Black and poor Brazilians as a story prop.
It’s not a great look.
Our narrator is Linda, a thirty-something American woman who’s pulled along to São Paulo when her brilliant husband is invited to be a guest professor for a year. Linda’s life is…very empty. She has no job and no friends, and feels very lonely and purposeless. Contrary to what anyone else may say, the entire purpose of this novel is to show Linda’s attempts to “find herself”—most notably through the alluring, addicting Celia, an stage actress she eventually has an affair with.
It’s not that I didn’t find Linda’s story interesting. I did. However, I think it’s completely disingenuous to market a book in such a way that one could reasonably believe it centers the stories of native Brazilians and/or women of color. I spent the first few chapters waiting for Burnham to move on to a new narrator, but it never came. Instead, we watch as Linda goes shopping in high-class boutiques, eats five-star dinners, hobnobs with São Paulo’s academic elite. There’s a supporting cast that displays more diversity, but it’s just that: supporting. As far as books about rich white lady problems go, this was a good book. But, again, I’m not sure I can get on board white a rich white lady problems novel that so blatantly uses Black women to prop up its story, both in how it’s marketed, and in how the story itself evolves.
To call Marta, Linda’s maid, a three-dimensional character is impossible. She’s an amalgamation of tropes, but is essentially the too-familiar “wise” Black woman who helps the white protagonist find her way. No where in It Is Wood, It Is Stone does Marta get her own voice, her own thoughts, or her own feelings—except once. Towards the end of the book, Linda “writes out” a story that Marta tells her and presents it to readers in its own, wholly encapsulated chapter. But is this really Marta speaking? Or is it Linda recreating a Black woman’s voice for her own ends (in this case, to entertain her husband, and to give context for her “confession” of the affair she had)? This didn’t feel like a story that consciously and purposefully gave women of color a voice—rather, it felt like co-opting a voice. Which is something that women of color have likely had quite enough of, thank you very much.
As a final note, I’ll mention that I was not particularly pleased with how Burnham approached incorporating queer people into her story. One of the actors that Linda meets through Celia is trans, and the text introduces her by deadnaming her. “Simone, who was still [deadname] at that time, had walked in looking for work…” Dear cisgender authors (and everyone): please do not ever, ever use a character’s deadname on the page. Forget it exists. Just don’t do it.
Additionally, when Celia and Linda sleep together, Linda’s thoughts about performing oral sex seem to assume that heterosexual intercourse is the default: “I ducked below her belly button and closed my eyes; it felt as though I could have been pressing my mouth against a warm, soft-bearded face.” While I do understand that Linda had never been with a woman before, the reference to male facial hair during lesbian sex was distracting and odd. (Note: I do understand that not all people who have beards identify as male, but my point carries, regardless.)
Books about bored wives having affairs are nothing new. As far as such things go, It Is Wood, It Is Stone is a well-written, interesting, and easily read example. I liked this book and had very little complaints about construction, writing, or characterization. I think Gabriella Burnham is an excellent writer, and I wouldn’t hesitate to pick up a second novel of hers (so long as the premise was appealing). However, while I’m not opposed to literary fiction about rich white ladies, I am opposed to literary fiction about rich white ladies that uses marginalized people as “flavoring” and set dressing.
