Siobhan Phillips

"I sat on the concrete stairs now and thought about lives" BENEFIT by Siobhan Phillips is a portrait of a stalled academic, one who does what is expected until she doesn't. The question of what it means to do good, to contribute. A fellowship recipient group going about their lives and their entangled relationships, their thoughts. There’s not much plot in the book, musings about life and relationships, about race and class and all these different things in America. The dialogue is wonderful, but it's a meandering sort of book.  Thanks to Bellevue Literary Press and LibraryThing for this early review copy.… (meer)

Benefit, Siobhan Phillips, author
This book is a masterpiece in its own way. Some of the sentences seem obscure, requiring me to reread and rethink the meaning of many of them; they open up a whole world of questions about the world and how it is perceived by others, of how we define everything in relation to how others define the same things. As the main character, Laura, a questionable scholar of English, prepares an essay for a coming benefit for The Weatherfield Foundation, a non-profit that grants scholarships to qualified students, of which she was once a recipient, a decade ago, she reveals a world and a human race full of contradictions. As she explores the background of the foundation, she discovers that there are tremendous contradictions in their own limited recorded history and even the meaning of benefit is not as simple as one might think. There is more than one way to define the word.
The Foundation grew out of the sugar industry, a commercial enterprise that damaged the environment, abused its employees, engaged in racism, and provided no nutritional value whatsoever. Can something innately bad, actually do good? Does the harm it caused the environment or they body justify the pleasure it provided? Are vegetarians or vegans more intelligent and successful, even more moral? Are the scholarships they provide better for those who are qualified intellectually or those qualified according to their diversity and their disadvantages? Is character more valuable than skill? Is experience more important than book learning? What group of people benefits the most from the Foundation?
If the successful person is thin and beautiful and Laura is not, is that the reason for Laura’s lack of success? Or, is her lack of success due to the fact that she does not see herself as beautiful and successful, and thus neither does the world? Some people are intense, others are superficial, and they, though less genuine and sincere, often appear to be ahead of the game. Those that know how to make themselves appear friendly, compassionate and intelligent, without possessing those endearing, and hopefully, enduring qualities, sometimes find it easier to make friends. Are we so shallow that we only care about appearances and not results, implied values rather than real ones?
If we fight a war to provide freedom for other oppressed classes of people, is it justified if we then enslave our own people, forcing them to be soldiers, forcing them to fight the wars we chose and they did not? Should rules be obeyed, contracts be honored, plans be respected, in other words, are we responsible or irresponsible depending on how we approach those subjects? Are activists pursuing an honorable venture or are they just pleasing their own needs? Is it good or bad? Do those who engage in activist pursuits have legitimate concerns for others or are they satisfying their own needs to find their own sense of self and freedom? Are those that have suffered disadvantage and survived, more qualified than those with actual qualifications but who have not suffered?
Is consistency more valuable than inconsistency? Is being open to change better than being opposed to it and remaining stagnant? Do Republicans or Democrats have the right philosophy? Was Obama or Trump the better leader? Is Christianity more beneficial than Judaism? Is religion a valid concept? Can we prove the existence of G-d? If the person’s intent is worthwhile, does it matter if the person is not worthwhile? If the war is won, but the end result is death and more destruction, is it worth it? Does diversity or qualification make a good candidate for a position? Are those least reliable judged as the most reliable because of their gift of gab or empathy? Many questions arose, and while some of these questions were not asked outright, the reader will think of them as they are subtly inferred to by the author, because they will all remind us of the current issues we are facing today. Our environment, our climate, our economy, our safety, our government are all up for discussion. Is being open to change better than being opposed to it and remaining stagnant? At times, it was difficult to ponder the questions constantly raised, but they were so well crafted, I could not stop reading or thinking about them. There are multiple tangents, and myriad anecdotal descriptions constantly bombarding the reader, it almost felt like someone was trying to explain everything on their mind in one long run-on sentence. Yet it was a sentence the reader will feel they must read until it ends.
Laura questions everything, and does not accept anything at face value, but at the same time, she professes to have few values of her own as she investigates the values of others. She is insecure and yet is valued by others for her ability to make secure value judgments. Do they really know her? Does she know herself?
When the benefit is finally held, and many old Weatherfield scholars meet as they prepare and attend, are they successful or not? Are those that seem to be successful sincere or shallow? Do any of the people Laura knew a decade ago have core values that they keep or are they constantly changing even as they insist that they are the same? What is a friend? Are these Laura’s friends or what others would call acquaintances? Is she a good friend? Is she honest in her relationships? Are her failures her own fault or the fault of others?
The amount of imagination and creativity that the author had to engage in to write this book had to be monumental. Every conversation is a tangent of another, offering still another anecdote about some idea or about some person or event. The book is written in short staccato sentences that barely give the reader time to take a breath, and in this way, we discover that no one seems really interested in in-depth thought or investigation. There is no time. Everyone has places to go and people to meet, but do they really? Everyone talks around issues and never really gets to the point. Few questions are answered as each conversation almost becomes a monologue from the person questioned that does not answer the questions, but rather, asks their own or babbles about what they personally want to discuss, often making little sense and having little to do with the purpose of the intended conversation. In this fashion, the book goes on and questions every moment of our lives, presenting both sides of all issues, but never reaching a conclusion, other than the one that there is no conclusion, but this one, in the end, Laura feels free.… (meer)

Benefit is an interesting exploration of the role of story-telling and how the stories we tell ourselves, particularly if they aren’t true, can lead us astray. The main character in Benefit, a young woman named Laura, is struggling to make a place for herself in the academic world. During an attempt to solve a historical puzzle, she begins to question her own assumptions about what life should look like, what is true, and what other people think of her. Phillips’ writing is clear and entertaining, unfortunately the structure, particularly in the first half, is distracting and has an odd flattening effect on an otherwise entertaining and thoughtful story.… (meer)