I Could Live Here Forever by Hanna Halperin: book review
Overview: Leah starts over in Wisconsin on uneven footing. While she's gotten into one of the most prestigious MFA programs in the country, she struggles with feeling like she's good enough compared to her cohort of writers. As she's finding herself as a writer, she also embarks on a tumultuous relationship that defines her time in Madison more than the program itself. Leah falls head over heels for Charlie, but as she learns about his heroin addiction, she realizes the relationship is far more complicated than it seemed on the surface. Overall: 4
Characters: 4 I liked Leah. I enjoyed spending the book with her. But from a storytelling perspective, she seemed underutilized. Halperin hints at Leah's own major character flaws, the way that she's happy to use people in relationships for her own selfish gain, consciously or not. But this doesn't get explored or addressed over the course of the book. She's so consumed by Charlie that these glimmers never get much air, so they're unable to really create that satisfying character development. At one point, she gets cut off for being a toxic force in someone's life that she'd been close to for many years, and it's never addressed. It barely seems to make an impact. The author attempts to showcase some complexity in the sense that Leah had been pulled into a toxic relationship but also was perpetrating the same toxic dynamic in other parts of her life with other people, but this was frustratingly not taken to its full conclusion. Leah never evolves over the course of the novel. She doesn't gain increased awareness, she doesn't heal, she doesn't take big steps forward. Her character stagnates, and it makes for an unsatisfying conclusion, even though I did enjoy and relate to her character through much of the novel.
Charlie suffers from a similar lack of development. His character sketch holds up, but the details are kept too fuzzy. Despite reading from Leah's point of view, it's hard to understand why she's so obsessed with Charlie despite his overbearing texting, obvious insecurity, total instability, and trouble with boundaries. Halperin is clearly trying to make a point to the reader that they aren't in a healthy relationship. She does this quite well, but what that robs the reader of is the key understanding around why Leah would throw her life away for this man. He's never made compelling to the reader. Leah often wonders why all her friends don't like Charlie, and the reader is left with the same stale impression. It makes for a lot of telling and little showing.
The best characters, and sections of the plot, revolve around the MFA program. While we don't spend a ton of time with her cohort, they're all vibrant personalities and add interesting dimension to her world. They offered some of the best character work in the novel and brought out the best development in Leah.
Plot: 4 The plot struggled in a similar way to the characters. There's a strong outline. The beats are compelling and the flow of the writing carries the story, but it just never reached its full potential. There's a certain hollowness to the development of the story where it feels like Halperin is going down a checklist of demonstrating the hallmarks of a bad relationship. The book also continued about 50 pages too long. There's a moment just before the final 50 pages that would've made the perfect ending. Instead, it drags on, dwelling in a stasis that gets tedious quickly and removes all the intrigue from what would've been an interesting ending.
What makes this book good is the period of time Leah is in the MFA program. I loved the glimmers of MFA life, the insights into the workshops, the budding friendships, and the stress of finding your footing in the writing world surrounded by talented peers. These sections are where the book shone and got away from its paint by numbers patterning. The plot line with Charlie isn't all bad too. There are plenty of compelling moments in the thick of the story. Overall, though, the book is much better in the moment than at the thousand foot view.
Writing: 4 Halperin does a great job with pacing. From page one, I was hooked, and I read a good chunk of the book every time I picked it up. After DNFing a string of books, this was the first to catch my attention, and that certainly counts for something. While there were plenty of holes here, that doesn't take away from the fact that I enjoyed reading the book.
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