Landscapes

“Exquisite… Immersed in the works of Turner throughout, Landscapes likens one character (Julian) to Turner’s shadows, another (Aidan) to his light, and Penelope to a place between light and dark, appearing and disappearing—which, in Landscapes, is the place where writing happens. To exist between collapse and renewal, in other words, is to live with an awareness that destruction has always been with us; the choice, Lai has suggested, is not between beauty and rot but whether to see their proximity to each other. There is some hope in this way of seeing. The closer Penelope looks at disaster, the more she sees acts of reparation, resilience in the face of loss.”
—Scott Schomburg, Public Books

* Christine Lai is a Publishers Weekly‘s “Writers to Watch”:
“Lai wanted to write a country house novel that subverts the glamor of depictions like that of Downton Abbey. She was influenced by W.G. Sebald’s narratives of houses similar to Mornington, which required for their construction the devastation of landscapes and villages. ‘I was fascinated by this idea that something that appears very beautiful and respectable is in fact complicit in this history of destruction.'”
—Matt Seidel, Publishers Weekly

“Just now I’m reading Landscapes by Christine Lai… She has a very special way of writing about violence, loss, and memory.”
—Jenny Erpenbeck, author of Kairos, longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024

“Working against time to catalog artists and storytellers before the building is demolished, [Penelope’s] archive becomes a diary of solace and poignant recollection until she learns Julian—Aidan’s brother and Penelope’s rapist—is returning to see his former home one last time. As she writes an elegy of preservation, Penelope navigates a prosaic detour around her future shock.”
—Marcela Davison Avilés, NPR

“Andrew loved this book, which explores the futility and importance of preserving and archiving art at the end of the world. ‘It really made me think about why we care about art—any sort of art—in the face of all these major things happening in the world,’ he says. Largely told in the form of journal entries from an archivist living on a crumbling estate, this book is for art lovers and the apocalypse-curious alike. ‘It did make me wanna just walk around museums and look at the different pieces that are unpacked in this one,’ Greta says.”
—Greta Johnsen, WBEZ Chicago, with Andrew Limbong

“In the process of rereading Penelope’s analytical entries, I noticed that the precise locations of each insertion serve as an ingenious sort of plot device. See, after a point, the reader can surmise that Penelope herself is a survivor of assault. She can’t help but to carefully analyze art as she does; it’s how she heals and makes sense of the world… The most avid readers will have a hard time believing that Landscapes is a debut novel.”
—S. Elizabeth Sigler, The Common

“I envy readers entering this world for the first time. You will find beauty here, and wisdom.”
—Ay?egül Sava? (author of White on White), Electric Literature
“An Archivist for the End of the World”: An excerpt from Landscapes, Recommended by Ay?egül Sava?”

“The story of an archive—discovered in not only what it preserves, but what it leaves out—is compelling, and Landscapes has a lot to say about art, ruins, and beauty.”
—Amanda Paige Inman, Interview Magazine
Interview: “Christine Lai on Archives, Ruins, and Her Debut Novel Landscapes“

“A rich meditation on the burden of remembrance, the ruins of the past, and the ruins that climate crisis will soon bring us, Landscapes is a tightly woven debut that travels easily between epistles, point of view shifts, and art criticism… As much as Landscapes is about destruction and decay, it is equally about picking up the ruins and rebuilding.”
—Christina Wood, Full Stop

“In the wake of environmental destruction, Penelope is preparing to sell the house she and her partner have lived in for twenty years. While faced with a daunting past and looming future, she turns to art and beauty for home, hope and healing.”
—Karla J. Strand, Ms. Magazine

“Landscapes is a contemplation of beauty and decay, intention and uncertainty. This brilliantly ekphrastic novel invites us to consider the art of many who have come before and grappled with existential challenges in their times—whether Homer’s epics, Turner’s landscapes or Mahler’s symphonies. Just as those artists layered colors, characters, or tonal qualities in their work, Lai combines diary entries, academic critique, archival catalog notes and postcard messages. The resulting narrative encompasses different eras and different viewpoints. Landscapes is an indictment of humanity’s hubris, yes—but it’s also a sumptuous contemplation of the enduring power of art.”
—Barbara Lloyd McMichael, Our Coast

“With its careful attention to landscape painters and diary entries leading up to the demolition of the house, this is the ultimate piece of fiction about noticing what’s been overlooked.”
—Lorraine Berry, Los Angeles Times

“Plenty of books exist about what to do with the art of bad men, but changing the channel and walking on the other side of the street no longer cut it. Christine Lai’s debut novel, Landscapes, offers no illusions about or answers to this problem, but it is a fortifying read nonetheless. Instead of delivering a polemic, Landscapes probes the archive of feminist art for new answers, by blending diary entries, close-third-person narration, and criticism.”
—Grace Byron, The Believer