Book Write-up: Ida by Gertrude Stein

Ida: A Novel by Gertrude Stein

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Ida is a fascinating and difficult read. It's modernist and experimental. It doesn't flow, sentence to sentence, like you would expect a novel to. It's like a cubist painting made from text. Multiple points of view collide in a single paragraph so that each sentence may be a repetition of a previous sentence but from a different point of view. This style makes Ida difficult to read, at least until you get the hang of what's going on.

In terms of plot, things do happen: Ida is born, gets married, has dogs, likes things, hates things, is out and seen in Society. But this is a novella driven by the structure and style rather than character or plot. Ida the character remains opaque. We get so many points of view at once that any real sense of Ida is fragmented.

Ultimately I think this is a smart way to write about the beginnings of celebrity culture. Everyone sees Ida differently, and these different versions of Ida make a fragmented tableau that supplants narrative about the character Ida as a person.

Ida is enjoyable in as much as it is fascinating. If you enjoy looking at how a text is constructed and how the style itself gives meaning, you might enjoy this read.


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