Review: "The Limits" by Nell Freudenberger

The Limits by Nell Freudenberger
Published April 2024 via Knopf
★★★

It's 2020 in New York, and things are not going especially well. Kate is preparing to parent a baby but not especially prepared to suddenly parent a stepdaughter she's never met. Pia, said stepdaughter, would rather be back in Polynesia. Across town, Athyna is logging in to Kate's English class when she can, but her attention is divided, as she's suddenly been given most of the care duties for her young nephew. And half a world away, in Mo’orea, COVID has barely registered for Nathalie, Pia’s mother, other than to help determine which part of the world Pia will be living in.

The Limits is set during the relatively early days of COVID, partly as a plot device (among other things, COVID gets Stephen out of the apartment and makes Athyna's walls close in on her) and partly as a reminder of different shades of privilege. (It is not lost on me that it is lost on Stephen that his surprise at Athyna being so quiet is—in the context of the scene—implicit racism; nor is it lost on me that it is, again, lost on Stephen that a teenage girl might be uncomfortable being told to spend the night in the house of a man she’s never met.) It’s well written and thoroughly thought out, though readers should go in expecting a relatively slow read. I was a little surprised by how little interaction Kate in particular ends up having with the rest of the characters—they’re all operating, on some level, on their own planes. But I love the push-pull between how we see Kate and how we see Nathalie: neither is the villain in the other’s story, but they’re each a little skeptical of the other, and the way they perceive themselves is contrasted by the way they see each other.

I read this for the description, but rereading that description now, I'm not sure how well the content of the book actually matches it. The description feels aspirational, maybe, in retrospect? Or perhaps like a "find the six items that are different in these pictures" game. The description calls Athyna's nephew a toddler, but in the book he's four (still in need of a ton of attention, but no longer a toddler); in the description, Pia and Kate are in "near total isolation" together, except book-Pia spends as much time as possible outside the apartment, so they rarely interact; and so on. Not quite wrong, and not bad, just...a little off-kilter.

This is a book in which not all that much changes for the characters as they make their way through a few months of COVID-induced uncertainty and events both predictable and unpredictable in their own lives. Maybe they come out a little more jaded or with their eyes a little wider open, but on the whole of it the characters come out of the book as the same people with the same views that they went in with, just with an extra few months of experience. A solid read, if not one that left me deeply invested in what becomes of the characters after the end of the book.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.