Justine centers on a young woman artist (the eponymous Justine) who, as the book opens, has just lost her home – and with it all her work – to a fire. The home had belonged to her grandfather, a painter, and his work was also destroyed. For Justine, the fire represents the loss of her whole past – and then some. The story unfolds disjointedly, jumping in time to before the fire and back to the present. When the fire occurred, Justine was a short time away from staging an exhibit of her work at the National Gallery, and she has lost everything she prepared for it. So she must create a body of work to show (backing out isn't an option she's willing to consider), with no home, no studio, and no materials. She proceeds to get very drunk, frequently. She crashes at friends' houses, in a factory, in studios, borrows materials, charms and alienates the people around her who want to help. Even as Justine puts together a body of photographs and videos that will be her triumph, the reader is slowly made aware of a horrible, dark secret, the full effect of which is never seen in this book. (There is, evidently, a sequel.)
I subscribe to Matt Bell's Writing Exercises (which I highly recommend to anyone who is at all interested in writing). This month's newsletter (The Novel-Shaped Story II) has stayed very much on my mind for some reason. Since reading it, I've found myself mentally applying the three-act framework retroactively to all kinds of books I've read, and it's been an eye-opening exercise. In Justine the inciting incident – the fire – is the first thing we know. It's happens before any exposition, and description of the characters, anything else in the book. And yet, even in that moment, there are clues to what we will later learn, and deceptions as well. The unclarity around time in the narrative slows the reader's comprehension of the central event of the book, even as it's there for us right on the first page. I didn't totally love this book, but its exposition is brilliant.
