Category: Midstream

In her Small Press Picks review, Beth Castrodale writes that MIDSTREAM,by Lynn Sloan, is a “reflective, thought-provoking novel” and an “engaging story” She begins: “As we approach middle age, it’s not uncommon for us to take stock of our lives and feel disappointment–with the choices we’ve made (or haven’t been able to make) or with…

Natalia Nobel wrote: Dreams That Won’t Die: A Review of Lynn Sloan’s Midstream In Lynn Sloan’s compelling novel Midstream, we follow Chicago-based protagonist Polly Wainwright through a midlife crisis that involves her unfulfilled dream of becoming a documentary film director, the breakup of a relationship, and the serious illness of her closest friend Eugenia. Structured…

LargeHearted Boy invited me to write a playlist for MIDSTREAM for Book Notes. I chose to write about how Polly Wainwright, my character, connected to music. The era is 1974. Between the summer of 1974, when Midstream opens and Polly Wainwright enters a crowded corporate elevator and the year 1962 when her story begins, a revolution invaded…

Your cocktail-party description of Midstream: It’s the summer of ’74, Chicago. Polly Wainwright thinks she’s finally landed on a safe perch in a turbulent world – anti-war protests, noisy feminists, the old ways fraying when she finds that every decision she’s made is based on a lie.  When you realized you wanted to be an author:…

Unlike the turbulent 1970s she lives in, Polly Wainwright is determined to be calm, competent, and professional. She’s got a boyfriend making a name for himself as a war correspondent in Vietnam, close friends, and a steady (albeit boring) job in the Illustration Department at Encyclopaedia Britannica’s Chicago location. But once upon a time Polly…

In Lynn Sloan’s luminous novel Midstream, a woman’s comfortable, enviable life is upended. In 1974, Polly is thirty-four. The US simmers in discontent. Vietnam protests and feminists who demand equal rights and pay are disturbing reminders that all is not as it should be. Though she feels suffocated by the doublespeak, false enthusiasm, and exhausting jockeying…

Lynn Sloan’s Midstream is a novel that captures what it means to be woman in America agnostic of time or place.  Polly Wainwright works as a picture editor for Encyclopedia Britannica (EB). It’s 1974. A once aspiring filmmaker, Polly has settled for a steady job in Chicago while her boyfriend is off across the seas covering the…

Polly Wainwright has drifted through her twenties and early thirties.  She once dreamed of making movies but has settled for a job as a picture editor. She moved from her life in New York back to Chicago when her mother was injured in a car crash and just stayed there.  Polly has a partner but…