TAKE WHAT YOU NEED by Idra Novey — Review by Stella

I’ve had this one on my ‘to read’ pile for a while. Attracted by the generic-service-station cover image, and the fact that this is published by Daunt Books, who pick up on some interesting titles not widely available outside their country of origin; a quick read of the blurb convinced me I needed to read this one. Set in the Allegheny Mountains of Appalachia, it’s the story of Jean, her life in a rundown rust belt town (which isn’t going to see better days), her use of industrial materials to make sculptural structures, her almost solitary lifestyle, and her grief at being estranged from her step-daughter, Leah. It’s also Leah’s story — her coming to terms with her feelings for Jean, as well as her anger, through their shared, if broken, history, and Jean’s ‘manglements’. The Manglements are Jean’s massive towers welded from scrap metal plate, decorated with quirky junkyard and market table finds, all holding meaning and often humour, filling the downstairs of her rundown house, pressuring the floor and breathing into that space. Weave into this Jean’s awkward and unexpected relationship with Elliot, deliberately kept ambiguous by the author, but who becomes the vehicle for reconciling Leah with Jean, post-death; and whose character represents the despair and poverty of an abandoned community, Take What You Need explores the impact people have on each other, how an environment, emotionally and physically, shapes a person, and the driven passion for art that can illuminate a life. Here are Louise Bourgeois and Agnes Martin, two fellow reclusive and determined travellers, whispering in Jean’s ear. Here is the singular passion, as well as her cantankerous nature, that allows Jean to create, to follow her own path in spite of doubt, injury and risk, and an embattled, increasingly bitter and xenophobic community. And for Leah, a reckoning — a recognition of love, the importance of our childhoods and how they shape us in spite of ourselves, and a responsibility to step outside her own perspective to see everything that is good in a life’s work.