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You or Someone Like You: a novel

“Literature shows us who and what we really are, whether we like it or not.” So teaches Anne, the heroine of Chandler Burr’s, You or Someone Like You: a novel. Anne and Howard, a married couple who share a love of literature, change locales and ways of life, but ultimately are forced to examine their unique histories, their ties to their centers and to each other.

As Anne and Howard speak to each other through the words of their favorite authors, their literary links create a bond. That bond begins to fray as they move to Hollywood, and Anne becomes the facilitator of a book club for film writers. Howard remains the professor/performer. Their son Sam becomes both their bond and the future that they cannot control or understand. A person is not a written word, not a crystallized idea. Anne, Howard and Sam are their own people, a family of increasingly disparate rays, heading off in different directions.

The title creates an uneasy, almost anxious feeling that we may have from time to time, that we are not unique, or that our lives do not matter, or that in the scope of time we are merely letters, not even words or phrases in the stories that are our lives. We learn about the words: intermarriage and love, but the novel shows us that words are not the only way. Chandler Burr, the New York Times scent critic, writes this intelligent and emotional novel not only with words, but also with the senses.

Linda Blasnik, Librarian