Anca L. Szilágyi’s latest novel, Dreams Under Glass, follows Binnie, an aspiring diorama artist and struggling millennial dealing with her quarter-life crisis while trying to survive in New York City. She has a decent job as a paralegal, a job she must keep while finding time to fulfill her creative ambitions and social obligations. When a sudden tragedy strikes her workplace, Binnie has to figure out how to survive in the rat race while avoiding failure as an artist. The novel examines how Binnie struggles with these challenges physically and emotionally.

Szilágyi’s novel begins as a picaresque, capturing Binnie’s life before the 2008 recession. Binnie is a creative person, appreciative of  art and capable of seeing beauty in found objects. However, she’s easily cowed by stronger forces like her parents, who withdraw their funding for college when she decides to get an art degree, and her workplace, where she is overworked and underpaid. She also compares herself to others, such as her friend Ellen, whose wealth and connections have primed her for success in the highly competitive art world.

Rather than dwelling on Binnie’s mediocre job and less-than-stellar living situation, Szilágyi focuses on moments of levity and beauty. Binnie’s art, although often restricted to daydreams and brainstorming rather than actual production, at least presents an escape from the humdrum aspects of her life. Because Szilágyi’s prose is clear and detailed, Binnie’s imagined dioramas are interesting and enticing, even if her plans never come to fruition. For example, Szilágyi writes about Binnie creating artwork after finding a photograph of a young boy while in a subway station:

At home, with her coat and shoes still on and the steam heat clanking, Binnie switched on the incandescent light above her work table and emptied a box of stale fruit candy, sorting out the yellow ones. The boy would be a character in a new diorama, and the yellow jujubes would be its center of gravity. She would shellac them together and they’d lend the thing, whatever it was, an unearthly translucence. She would make a wooden box for it. Maybe she would paint the box and bake it the way Cornell baked his painted boxes to weather them. Instant antiques. She stalked into the kitchen and nabbed a dusty container of turmeric, grabbed a circular from the recycling bin and sprinkled on it a ring of the marigold-colored powder. Marigolds. Would those fit? They would add whimsy, perhaps. Silk marigolds. 

One of the novel’s central themes is how forces beyond an artist’s control can stymie both art and artist. Binnie works in the Lipstick Building, which housed Bernie Madoff’s organization and was at the center of the housing market collapse. Her firm is run by three people who are set in their ways and comfortable throwing their wealth and power around. Binnie may enjoy the fruits of their occasional generosity—chocolates in the break room, free opera tickets—but her bosses demand ever more in return for these perks, which they use to wield power over Binnie. It’s a harsh reminder of how easily powerful people can destroy others’ safety and stability, often without glancing away from their computers.

Dreams Under Glass is, more than anything, a diorama that sets a period of one woman and artist’s life behind glass. It fully captures the feeling of isolation and helplessness that come from being independent for the first time and dealing with forces beyond one’s control. Though it’s fictional, it feels like a true-to-life tale of an artist’s struggle at the turn of the millennium. Thanks to her remarkable attention to detail and naturalistic dialogue, Szilágyi seems able to transform anything, no matter how modest—even discarded on the street—into an artistic statement.  

+++

Anca L. Szilágyi is a Brooklynite living in Chicago. Her writing appears in Lilith Magazine, Orion Magazine, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. Her first novel, Daughters of the Air, was published by Lanternfish in 2019.

+

Alex Carrigan (he/him, @carriganak) is an editor, poet, and critic from Virginia. His debut poetry chapbook, May All Our Pain Be Champagne: A Collection of Real Housewives Twitter Poetry (Alien Buddha Press, 2022), was longlisted for Perennial Press’ 2022 Chapbook Awards. His writing has appeared in Quail Bell Magazine, Lambda Literary Review, Barrelhouse, Sage Cigarettes, RITUALS, and Stories About Penises. Learn more at: carriganak.wordpress.com.