 | |
| Author | Christine Schutt |
|---|---|
Publication date | 2008 |
| Publication place | United States |
All Souls is a 2008 novel by American writer Christine Schutt. The book takes place in New York City, and follows the lives of faculty and students at the fictional Siddons School. [1]
The novel draws from Schutt's experience as a teacher at an all-girls school in Manhattan. [2] Since the book's publication, Schutt noted "types" from the school, Nightingale-Bamford, she would include if she were to rewrite it. [3]
All Souls was in part inspired by David Malouf's novel Remembering Babylon . [2] Despite perception that the novel "[pushes] the boundaries of fiction" [4] Schutt has said she did not intend for it to do so. [3]
The novel follows Astra Dell and her classmates at Siddons School over the course of their senior year.
Maud Casey, writing for the New York Times , referred to the novel as "refreshingly strange". [4] Casey compared the novel favorably to the work of Virginia Woolf, whose novels Schutt references in All Souls. [4] Publishers Weekly criticized Schutt for not "[doing] enough with the familiar prep school setting to make the story resonate". [5]
In a review of Schutt's depiction of marriages, David Winters referred to the book's omniscient narrator as "[...] lending a sense of distance" to the novel, in contrast with her earlier Nightwork, which featured first person narration. [6]
All Souls was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. [7] [8]