"Seasons Clear, and Awe" - Chapter 4

We conclude the first week of PILCROW’s Inaugural Serialized Novel Contest with Chapter 4 of Matthew Gasda’s Seasons Clear, and Awe. Over the next two weeks, we’ll serialize the first few chapters of our remaining Finalist’s unpublished novels, and then subscribers (both free and paid) will vote on a Winner to be fully serialized here on the Substack (Finalists are awarded $500; the Winner $1,000.)

Our Finalists for this round:

1. Seasons Clear, and Awe by Matthew Gasda

   Chapter 1

   Chapter 2

   Chapter 3

2. Mites by Gregory Freedman

3. Notes on the State of Virginia by Peter Pnin

We’re excited to have all of you as a part of this endeavor to forge a new path for fiction on Substack. If you believe in what we’re doing, please consider offering a paid subscription.

“Seasons Clear, and Awe” chronicles three decades in the life of the Gazda family, whose children inherit not wealth but something more dangerous: their parents’ unlived ambitions and their mother’s gift for psychological dissection. As Stephen and Elizabeth grow from precocious children into neurotic artists in their thirties, Matthew Gasda reveals how post-industrial, late 20th century America created a generation too intelligent for ordinary happiness, too self-aware for decisive action: suspended between the working-class pragmatism of their fathers and the creative and spiritual aspirations of their mothers, capable of everything except building lives.

Matthew Gasda is the founder of the Brooklyn Center for Theater Research and the author of many books, including the recent novel The Sleepers and Writer’s Diary.

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The next day was Saturday, and Elizabeth wanted to see her friend Andrea, who lived two blocks away. It was a request Adele acquiesced to, though she didn’t necessarily want to see Andrea’s mother, Joni. Joni would inevitably put on a pot of coffee, assuming that the two women would hang out just like the two daughters, and Adele would have to talk about Tupperware parties, husbands, and neighborhood gossip.

But Elizabeth, who Adele noticed tended towards playing alone by herself, could be quite happy in her room, in her own world, and needed the social interaction.

And so she would put up with it. And there was the consolation that she generally felt more competent as a mother than Joni. There was the fascination of seeing how other women raised their daughters, and indeed their sons (Joni had a five-year-old son, Bobby). It was all ...