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Tabitha, Get Up
Tabitha is a lonely fifty-year-old biographer who, in order to restore her self-respect and pay her rent, attempts to write two biographies one about an actor so famous his face is on the side of buses, and the other about a popular writer of children’s books recently outed as an author of erotic fiction. Is Tabitha ready to deal with interviewing an actor so handsome and charismatic she thinks he should be bottled and sprayed on belligerent people as a form of crowd control? Can she form a genuine friendship with a cult novelist who pressures her to compromise her values? While facing these and other challenges, Tabitha is bedeviled by memories of her long-ago divorce and the terrible wedding when, accidently bumped on a balcony, she shot off into the shrubbery. Is it true, she wonders, that there’s probably a dead body beneath the floating rot of any marriage? When surrounded by pretentious beautiful people does it help to imagine their intestines are full of worms? Are champagne bubbles the devil’s air pockets? Is it ever too late to change your life—from the bottom up?
- GenresFiction
310 pages, Paperback
Published May 3, 2024
1 person is currently reading
40 people want to read
About the author
Lee Upton
36Ìýbooks28ÌýfollowersLee Upton writes books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and literary criticism. Her comic novel, Tabitha, Get Up, will be released in May 2024 from Sagging Meniscus Press. A literary mystery is forthcoming in 2025. She is also the author of The Day Every Day Is, winner of the Saturnalia Books Prize, and two collections of short stories, The Tao of Humiliation, and Visitations, which were both awarded the Kirkus Star. The Tao of Humiliation received the BOA Short Fiction Prize. Her novella, The Guide to the Flying Island, was awarded the Miami University Novella Prize. Her collection of essays, Swallowing the Sea: On Writing & Ambition Boredom Purity & Secrecy, received ForeWord Review's Book of the Year Award in the category of books about writing. Her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, the New Republic, Poetry, Harvard Review, American Poetry Review, and in three editions of Best American Poetry.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 26, 2025
A few confessions for you; 1. I adore Tabitha, I didn’t care what was going on as long as I got to be inside the whirlwind of her head, 2. I have no idea what was going on and who was who, 3. that fact I spent most of the book clueless didn’t bother me one bit, I gladly let the words wash over me as Tabitha’s life played out, 4. I really really want Blowman to get a spin-off book with zero dialogue.
This is such an unusual book for me to read, it’s a bit of a rom-com in it’s own way but far more experimental than your run of the mill romance novel. I was asked to describe what I was reading by a friend and I couldn’t do it, I started off with Tabitha is writing two biographies, one of her subjects is not who she claims to be…or maybe they are and are lying? I gave up in the end as it is just too unpredictable to describe and said this book is wonderful, it is crammed with brilliant characters and I’m laughing my ass off. There are some challenging scenes of loneliness and depression and even at it’s darkest moments Tabitha’s humour shines through. There is a real nuttiness to this book and it goes deeper that the 100’s of squirrels that feature, Tabitha is the sort of person you can see bits of yourself in; all those little insecurities that you try and hide from the world, Tabitha has them and just like a lot of people she has her methods of deflecting anybody who gets too close to seeing them.
The writing is excellent, moving away from chapter structures we have notes, lists, voicemails, texts, therapy sessions, email exchanges and panic attacks. I have no idea how Upton kept this book on track but bravo to her. The funniest book I have read this year and it is gonna take some beating. Highly recommended.
Blog review:
This is such an unusual book for me to read, it’s a bit of a rom-com in it’s own way but far more experimental than your run of the mill romance novel. I was asked to describe what I was reading by a friend and I couldn’t do it, I started off with Tabitha is writing two biographies, one of her subjects is not who she claims to be…or maybe they are and are lying? I gave up in the end as it is just too unpredictable to describe and said this book is wonderful, it is crammed with brilliant characters and I’m laughing my ass off. There are some challenging scenes of loneliness and depression and even at it’s darkest moments Tabitha’s humour shines through. There is a real nuttiness to this book and it goes deeper that the 100’s of squirrels that feature, Tabitha is the sort of person you can see bits of yourself in; all those little insecurities that you try and hide from the world, Tabitha has them and just like a lot of people she has her methods of deflecting anybody who gets too close to seeing them.
The writing is excellent, moving away from chapter structures we have notes, lists, voicemails, texts, therapy sessions, email exchanges and panic attacks. I have no idea how Upton kept this book on track but bravo to her. The funniest book I have read this year and it is gonna take some beating. Highly recommended.
Blog review:
May 9, 2024
The problem with comic fiction of recent vintage is that, despite many claims or protestations that readers can expect "a laugh in every line," the ratio is in fact much worse (indeed, in some genres like vampire parodies the laughs are scarcely to be found anywhere in the printed pages). Lee Upton has the sort of dependable track record in poetry and surreal short fiction that it seems evident she will live up to that unachievable goal of "laugh-out-loud funny." Yes, it was right to put our faith in her hands, Tabitha, Get Up really is that funny.
Maybe it's Tabitha Acrete's decades-long honing of how to live with failure and loneliness without letting them wear her down, save for the occasional very long nap. Maybe it's her nephew's bar, The End of the World, and its ability to atttract characters much farther from stereotype than any episode of Cheers could provide. Maybe it's the sheer implausibility of seeing Tabitha attempt to write the biography of an author who writes children's books about bunnies and adult books of soft-core erotica somehow being mixed up in an advanced cult. The characters or scenarios alone might succumb to stereotypes, but the exquisite mixing of all elements (like the exquisite mixing of Tabitha's favorite peach bellini cocktail) keeps every page of the novel freshly stirred. (Or was that shaken and not stirred, Mr. Bond?)
Because the reader can observe the obvious chemistry between Tabitha and her second biographical target, the actor Brent Vintner, there may be a few such readers who want to holler at Tabitha as much as the apostle Peter does in Acts. Come on, just suspend judgment and leap, for God's sake! But Upton's skill in crafting this character leaves us wondering until the final pages which path will be Tabitha's ultimate salvation - running away to a new life, or coming to terms with a familiar but scripted life, either one might be cause for another peach bellini.
It's evident from the first few pages that Upton can call upon her distilled and beautiful poetic voice for individual descriptive passages. A few pages later, it's equally evident that she uses voicemail messages, emails, and inner dialogue to create the fragments coalescing into a whole that have signified the backbone of great comic works since Bel Kaufman's Up the Down Staircase.
But the 300 pages of character development here are what cinch the case for a fine comic novelist. The end result suggests elements of The Marx Brothers' Duck Soup, and the nameless protagonist of Lucy Ellmann's Ducks, Newburyport, the woman who is expert in tartes tatin. For Tabitha, one might hear the faintest suggestion of Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire, though Tabitha has relied upon the kindness of relatives and publishers more than the kindness of erstwhile strangers. That is, until the day she decides not to rely on such kindnesses, which always carried a toxic sting in any event. Plotting the path of Tabitha's awakening makes this a top-notch comic novel. It would be wonderful to see more of the same from Upton, if it doesn't take too much time away from her poetry.
Maybe it's Tabitha Acrete's decades-long honing of how to live with failure and loneliness without letting them wear her down, save for the occasional very long nap. Maybe it's her nephew's bar, The End of the World, and its ability to atttract characters much farther from stereotype than any episode of Cheers could provide. Maybe it's the sheer implausibility of seeing Tabitha attempt to write the biography of an author who writes children's books about bunnies and adult books of soft-core erotica somehow being mixed up in an advanced cult. The characters or scenarios alone might succumb to stereotypes, but the exquisite mixing of all elements (like the exquisite mixing of Tabitha's favorite peach bellini cocktail) keeps every page of the novel freshly stirred. (Or was that shaken and not stirred, Mr. Bond?)
Because the reader can observe the obvious chemistry between Tabitha and her second biographical target, the actor Brent Vintner, there may be a few such readers who want to holler at Tabitha as much as the apostle Peter does in Acts. Come on, just suspend judgment and leap, for God's sake! But Upton's skill in crafting this character leaves us wondering until the final pages which path will be Tabitha's ultimate salvation - running away to a new life, or coming to terms with a familiar but scripted life, either one might be cause for another peach bellini.
It's evident from the first few pages that Upton can call upon her distilled and beautiful poetic voice for individual descriptive passages. A few pages later, it's equally evident that she uses voicemail messages, emails, and inner dialogue to create the fragments coalescing into a whole that have signified the backbone of great comic works since Bel Kaufman's Up the Down Staircase.
But the 300 pages of character development here are what cinch the case for a fine comic novelist. The end result suggests elements of The Marx Brothers' Duck Soup, and the nameless protagonist of Lucy Ellmann's Ducks, Newburyport, the woman who is expert in tartes tatin. For Tabitha, one might hear the faintest suggestion of Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire, though Tabitha has relied upon the kindness of relatives and publishers more than the kindness of erstwhile strangers. That is, until the day she decides not to rely on such kindnesses, which always carried a toxic sting in any event. Plotting the path of Tabitha's awakening makes this a top-notch comic novel. It would be wonderful to see more of the same from Upton, if it doesn't take too much time away from her poetry.
May 9, 2024
Disclaimer: this review was from an advance reader copy.
The first pages of this book made me expect something in the vein of Otessa Moshfegh, a sad misfit girl novel. Instead, Tabitha is weird in a more pleasant way: she is lonely and struggling, but her upbeat befuddlement does much to stave off her melancholia and the reader’s; and her offbeat line of thoughts and lack of a filter (coupled with the blasé reception this often gets) make her a joy to spend a book with.
This is an epistolary novel, a format that I am surprised that we don’t see more often considering how text-based our communication has become in the internet age (prior to TikTok, anyway). Tabitha is a biographer making copious and discursive notes for work purposes, so her first-person narration (with occasional transcriptions of conversations or voicemails) is justified; the concept as a result manages not to feel gimmicky, though gets a bit strained with some of the longer conversations.
Tabitha, hard-up for cash, hits upon the idea of writing two biographies at once, on a children’s/adult author and on a movie star, both visiting her town for the summer. Each gives her much more than she bargained for. Though the two resulting plot lines cross only infrequently, one moves to a predictable and satisfying conclusion while the other goes off in unexpected directions, leading less to a full plot arc and more to an increasingly wacky set-piece. It seems to me that readers seeking both plot-based satisfaction and contemplative meandering will be satisfied. The reader is always a bit ahead of Tabitha for the former plot, but admires her incisiveness in uncovering the mysteries of the latter.
Meanwhile, there is plenty of wackiness in the narration itself, as Tabitha is full of quirky ruminations. In some works, this kind of this can be twee and grating, but here it is pulled off well: the correspondence of the early pages helps ease the reader in as Tabitha is hamming it up a bit for her editor, so when the notes and dialogue have a similar quality we are used to it. Furthermore, the other characters don’t bat an eyelash at Tabitha’s blunt and free-associative interjections, a refreshing quality that saves the reader from secondhand embarrassment. The reader quickly realizes that they’re in a bit of a hyper-reality, with character names such as Alberto Alberto and Tinker Flatts (“She sounds like a plateau.�) The novel is grounded enough to evoke empathy for these characters but absurd enough to keep the reader wondering what is coming next, and how Tabitha will react to it.
The first pages of this book made me expect something in the vein of Otessa Moshfegh, a sad misfit girl novel. Instead, Tabitha is weird in a more pleasant way: she is lonely and struggling, but her upbeat befuddlement does much to stave off her melancholia and the reader’s; and her offbeat line of thoughts and lack of a filter (coupled with the blasé reception this often gets) make her a joy to spend a book with.
This is an epistolary novel, a format that I am surprised that we don’t see more often considering how text-based our communication has become in the internet age (prior to TikTok, anyway). Tabitha is a biographer making copious and discursive notes for work purposes, so her first-person narration (with occasional transcriptions of conversations or voicemails) is justified; the concept as a result manages not to feel gimmicky, though gets a bit strained with some of the longer conversations.
Tabitha, hard-up for cash, hits upon the idea of writing two biographies at once, on a children’s/adult author and on a movie star, both visiting her town for the summer. Each gives her much more than she bargained for. Though the two resulting plot lines cross only infrequently, one moves to a predictable and satisfying conclusion while the other goes off in unexpected directions, leading less to a full plot arc and more to an increasingly wacky set-piece. It seems to me that readers seeking both plot-based satisfaction and contemplative meandering will be satisfied. The reader is always a bit ahead of Tabitha for the former plot, but admires her incisiveness in uncovering the mysteries of the latter.
Meanwhile, there is plenty of wackiness in the narration itself, as Tabitha is full of quirky ruminations. In some works, this kind of this can be twee and grating, but here it is pulled off well: the correspondence of the early pages helps ease the reader in as Tabitha is hamming it up a bit for her editor, so when the notes and dialogue have a similar quality we are used to it. Furthermore, the other characters don’t bat an eyelash at Tabitha’s blunt and free-associative interjections, a refreshing quality that saves the reader from secondhand embarrassment. The reader quickly realizes that they’re in a bit of a hyper-reality, with character names such as Alberto Alberto and Tinker Flatts (“She sounds like a plateau.�) The novel is grounded enough to evoke empathy for these characters but absurd enough to keep the reader wondering what is coming next, and how Tabitha will react to it.
December 19, 2024
This book for me was a 3.5/5. Lee Upton’s writing was flawless and her characters dryly satirical in that same way I attribute to the British. I loved Tabitha’s plight/quest to get her life under control at 50. I appreciated Upton’s choice to toy with form� opting for thematic subheadings instead of chapters. I believe Tabitha is an unreliable narrator, in the very best way, leading her to attract and analyze the people around her in a way that I, as a reader, don’t know if I can trust or believe.
The novel was completely ridiculous, again in an intentional good way, but at the same time, I didn’t laugh at the humor or get swept up into Tabitha’s crazy life as I had hoped I would.
The novel was completely ridiculous, again in an intentional good way, but at the same time, I didn’t laugh at the humor or get swept up into Tabitha’s crazy life as I had hoped I would.
April 29, 2024
It’s a rare pleasure to find books that are utterly hilarious and sharply insightful at the exact same time, but this wonderful novel pulls it off. If you’re a fan of very funny and smart books from authors like Richard Russo and Maria Semple, you’ll love this one.
Reading it felt to me as if I were at a wild fun party, the kind full of amazing conversations with cool people, where you feel more alive just being there. It’s a romp of a novel that could easily be gobbled up quickly but I stopped to reread many sentences for the pure enjoyment. A smashing good time!
Reading it felt to me as if I were at a wild fun party, the kind full of amazing conversations with cool people, where you feel more alive just being there. It’s a romp of a novel that could easily be gobbled up quickly but I stopped to reread many sentences for the pure enjoyment. A smashing good time!
November 21, 2024
Tabitha, Get Up is a delightful and brilliant book, at times hilariously funny and at times sweet and moving. Lee Upton's wit is utterly incisive and original. I laughed aloud through much of the book, as did my husband, whom I heard guffawing from the next room. Reading it is a wonderful treat.
November 17, 2024
Felt like reading letters from a cooky dear friend. I enjoyed the experience as much as the story.
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