Villa E

Villa E by Jane Alison
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of Villa E in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

The Gist

I picked up Villa E expecting an atmospheric, emotionally rich novel. Jane Alison is known for her lyrical prose and experimental style, and the premise sounded promising: an architecturally stunning villa, layered timelines, and complicated relationships. On paper, it had everything I like—intellectual intrigue, sensual undertones, and an artful setting. In practice, it felt like wandering through a museum where nothing is labeled and the staff refuses to speak to you.

The Details

Let’s start with the prose. Alison clearly knows how to write beautiful sentences. There’s no shortage of lovely turns of phrase or carefully crafted metaphors. But after a while, the style becomes exhausting. The writing isn’t just dense—it’s overwrought. Sentences twist and spiral until they lose all meaning. Paragraphs stretch on without grounding the reader in anything solid. I kept waiting for clarity, for emotional connection, for something to snap into place. It never did.

The story itself drifts. Characters wander in and out, but none of them feel fully formed. Their motivations remain unclear, their relationships underdeveloped. I struggled to care about anyone, mostly because I couldn’t get a firm grasp on who they were or what they wanted. The book hints at drama and psychological depth, but those hints never lead anywhere. Instead, we get endless introspection with no real payoff.

The villa—presumably the novel’s central metaphor—should have been a powerful presence. It’s the stage for every major interaction, a symbol of desire and decay. But it remains abstract and sterile. I wanted to feel the villa’s weight, to smell its old stone walls, to see how its spaces shaped the characters who moved through it. That never happened. Alison intellectualizes the setting instead of animating it. The result is a place that never becomes real.

Even the sensuality feels bloodless. Alison gestures toward eroticism and emotional tension, but she holds everything at arm’s length. The desire is more theoretical than physical, more about observing than experiencing. It’s hard to invest in characters when they barely seem to feel anything themselves. When the story reaches its more intimate moments, they land with a dull thud. There’s no heat, no ache, no stakes.

Structurally, the novel tries to be innovative. It fragments time, layers memories, and plays with narrative rhythm. In theory, that could have created something dreamlike and haunting. In reality, it creates confusion. Scenes blur. Timelines tangle. The emotional throughline—if it exists at all—gets lost in the shuffle. I enjoy experimental fiction when it’s purposeful. Here, the form felt like a smokescreen for a story that wasn’t fully developed.

Reading Villa E felt like being trapped in a beautiful building with no windows. There’s elegance in the design, but no light, no warmth, no air. It looks good on the surface, but there’s nothing underneath. The novel wants to say something about desire, art, memory, and space, but it never gets there. It gestures. Hints. It circles. And then it ends.

The Verdict

I know some readers might admire the ambition or the style. If you’re drawn to books that challenge traditional storytelling and lean hard into aesthetic experimentation, this might appeal to you. But if you want characters with pulse, stakes that matter, or a story that invites you in instead of keeping you at a distance, Villa E will likely disappoint.

It certainly disappointed me.