The author’s second novel is impressively constructed, following a young woman who was raised by a group of men beholden to her celebrity mother
Arguments about who should be writing what aside, it is rare to find a man who is able to write, with great insight, the interiority of women’s lives. In Shirley, Robbie Scott accomplishes this for several women, although particularly his unnamed narrator. Scott writes her in the first person, a potentially fraught move as it assumes an air of authority that, if done badly, would leave him more exposed to criticisms about assumptions and cliches.
But I have none. Because he has created a woman who feels so familiar it seems that if Scott has not, in fact, been perched outside my window, then he has been paying close attention to the women around him. This quiet curiosity into domesticity is rare and rewards the reader with a deep understanding of the oddities of these particular characters in this precise time and place.
