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Summary
Summary
A story of love, art, and obsession in Victorian England from debut novelist Lori Baker
The Glass Ocean is a story of becoming. Flamehaired, six-foot-two in stocking feet, newly orphaned Carlotta Dell'oro recounts the lives of her parents--solitary glassmaker Leopoldo Dell'oro and beautiful, unreachable Clotilde Girard--and discovers in their loves and losses, their omissions and obsessions, the circumstances of her abandonment and the weight of her inheritance. With a master artisan's patience and exquisite craft, debut novelist Lori Baker has created a gemlike Victorian world, a place where mistakes of the past reappear in the future, art can destroy, and family is not to be trusted.
Leopoldo and Clotilde meet in 1841 aboard the Narcissus , on an expedition led by Clotilde's magnanimous, adventuring father. It's Leopoldo's task to document the animals of the high sea, and by his skilled hand the drawings become the only record of these secretive creatures' existence. But what possesses his mind is golden Clotilde, and soon his papers fill with images of her, beginning a devotion that will prove inescapable. Clotilde meanwhile sees only her dear papa, but when he goes missing she is pushed to Leopoldo, returning with him to the craggy English shores of Whitby, the place to which Leopoldo vowed he would never return.
There they form an uneasy coexistence, lost to each other. Clotilde asks only for her papa, and Leopoldo turns to town, where he finds himself in the employ of a local glassblower. There, he begins to conceive his newest project: transforming his sketches into glass, blowing life and light into the darkest creatures. But in finding his art he surrenders Clotilde, and the distance between the two is only confirmed by the birth of baby Carlotta.
Years have passed and Carlotta is now grown. A friend from the past comes to Whitby and with his arrival sets in motion the Dell'oros' inevitable disintegration. Soon Carlotta is left alone to determine the course of her future, though perhaps it is written already. In hypnotic, inimitable prose Lori Baker's The Glass Ocean transforms a story of family into something as otherworldly and mesmerizing as life beneath the sea itself.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Baker's first novel (after two story collections, including Crash and Tell) conjures the strange Victorian world, both lush and barren, of 18-year-old orphan Carlotta Dell'Oro. Over six feet tall, fiery-haired, and filled with longing for the parents who were distant and full of mystery even when alive, Carlotta imagines the story of their lives and her own existence. Two decades before, when young Leo Dell'Oro sails as ship's artist with acclaimed naturalist Felix Girard on his expedition to the New World, Felix's gorgeous, clever daughter, Clotilde, teases the awkward Leo and captures his heart. When Felix disappears in a small boat, Clotilde goes with Leo to England, where she pines for her father, convinced he is alive, and where Leo becomes fascinated with glassmaking. Meanwhile, his new master, Thomas Argument, visits Clotilde daily, offering precious gifts and adoration that Leo can't express. Thomas drops Clotilde, however, when it becomes clear that she's pregnant, and Leo switches allegiances, joining Argument's competitor. Carlotta imagines her own development as "a battle between my mother and me," and feels sympathy for her mother having to give birth to a "cruel-eyed monster" such as Carlotta. When Carlotta arrives, she hovers in the corners of her parents' attention, forgotten among the poorly preserved creatures in Felix's dusty collection, until her parents' obsessions soon draw them away, leaving her behind. Baker's unforgettable tale is rich with nuance, buried passions, and Victorian oddities, offering passage into an extraordinary world. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency. (Aug. 5) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Baker's ambitious debut novel features a Victorian setting, mismatched lovers, dysfunctional families, doomed journeys of discovery, and the art and manufacture of glass. Our narrator and protagonist is Carlotta Dell'oro, a too-tall redhead, a ginger, only daughter of eccentric parents Leopold and Clotilde. The novel concentrates on their story, how they meet in the rooms of Felix Girard, eccentric explorer and collector, father of Clotilde. Leo falls for her, it seems, on sight, but he is diffident; obtuse but obsessive. Leo joins a cast of caricatures aboard the Narcissus for a journey to the Yucatan to study and collect specimens. This is Girard's journey, and Clotilde comes along. She concertizes on a spinet in her room, the men in her orbit, planets around a vain, blonde sun. Much happens. Clotilde and Leo find themselves together, back in dank, cold Whitby, England, married. At a loose end, low on funds, unable to relate to his narcissistic wife, Leo becomes an apprentice in the glasswork of Thomas Argument. The marriage a failure, the angular Argument becomes the hypotenuse in the Dell'oro love triangle. Leo immerses himself in the intricacies of re-creating ephemeral ocean creatures in glass. There are dazzling passages, and the concrete details of glass manufacture reign in the mannered prose. Is it the setting? Or the fact that every character shades into caricature, even the narrator? The prose often goes over the top and stays there. Baker has gone all-in to capture Carlotta's voice. This decision is admirable and risky. It is excessive, expressionistic. One will either love it or tire of it.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* In this hauntingly beautiful debut set in the mid-ninteenth century in the coastal English town of Whitby, 16-year-old Carlotta Dell'oro recounts the lives of her ill-fated parents. A sensitive young artist, Leo Dell'oro meets the beautiful, cruel Clotilde Girard at her father's lodgings above an antiquities shop. A larger-than-life explorer, Felix Girard has commissioned Leo and several others to join him on an expedition to a distant island to document the remains of a prehistoric creature. At sea, Leo finds himself the object of Clotilde's ridicule, even as he starts to fill his pages with sketches of her. When the mission proves to be a sham and Felix goes missing, Clotilde is beside herself. She eventually marries Leo and settles, unhappily, with him in a rented house in Whitby. Leo takes a menial job working for a glassmaker who carries on an inappropriate friendship with Clotilde right under his nose. While Leo retreats into himself and his art, Clotilde hatches a plan of escape in order to find her beloved papa, only to be thwarted when she discovers, to her horror, that she's pregnant. Gorgeously written and elegantly evocative, Baker's prose brings the Dell'oros' world to life and drives home the tragedy of their fruitless longings.--Huntley, Kristine Copyright 2010 Booklist
