Review: Under the Egg

Under the Egg by Laura Marx Fitzgerald

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I really enjoyed this thriller story with its background in art history and the current art world. Fitzgerald tipped a hat early on to Salinger by putting her loner protagonist in an old, decaying NYC house (direct reference to [b:Franny and Zooey|5113|Franny and Zooey|J.D. Salinger|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1355037988s/5113.jpg|3118417]). I enjoyed how Fitzgerald unfolded the specifics of this special art puzzle. The resolution happened very quickly, and I almost missed it because I was reading that chapter while trying to get kids to brush their teeth before bed, but it was something she had led up to through the whole book. Not a complicated plot, but enough so that it was nice to see her bring all the threads together by the end. Librarians were at first an object of fear, but then emerged to become heroes who were given enough air time to develop a romantic side-narrative.

What was most fun was seeing in this book some of the very facts about Raphael that Nancy had been bringing home to me all semester long from her art history class at UNC. This is a good pleasure read for anyone interested in art history.

Another interesting thing was seeing the digital divide represented so well. Theo's friend Bodhi is digitized, but Theo is almost a Luddite. This is so true from person to person these days--one person is deeply immersed in technology, and the next one never uses it. The nice moment with this was when Bodhi was reading from a wikipedia page, and Theo was filling in the conversation with details she knew. At first this just seemed like a clever way to do exposition, but then I realized it was a character having a dialog with wikipedia--very current!



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