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3.16 AVERAGE
3.16 AVERAGE
On the evidence of this book Lorrie Moore is a much better sentence writer than she is a novelist or a storyteller. Essentially this read like the diary of a country girl uprooted to a hip college town with three dramatic events forcibly shoehorned in to give it some dramatic foundation. Each of these three events, which I can't give away without spoiling what little plot there is, possess a one in a five million chance of happening in the life of an individual; that all three happen to our narrator seemed little short of science fiction. Our narcissistic narrator with her faux scattiness, her satirical Sylvia Plath acolyte persona though is presented as a magnet for life altering events. An example I can give of the clumsy artistry of this novel is when the narrator's employer asks her to look after a poisonous concoction she has made to remove stains. Why she has made this is a mystery. And there's no reason on earth why she needs to remove this concoction from her own freezer and give it to our narrator to put in her freezer. Knowing how dipsy our narrator is (ironically if she was really so dipsy and inattentive she wouldn't have been able to write this narrative which showcases how attentive she is to everything happening around her) we know she will omit to tell her flatmate about the gunge. As a piece of dramatic foreshadowing it's predictable and hammy. The poisoning of her flatmate doesn't even serve a purpose in the book. It's another disconnected comic anecdote of which there are many. Like our narrator, as a grown woman, dressing up in a bird costume to run in front of her father's tractor to warn the mice; or her climbing into a coffin with the corpse and staying there while it is carried to the cemetery. Our narrator though loves resorting to the attention seeking theatre of a child. Her problem is she can't grow up.
Its most interesting aspect is its criticism of white liberal America. The problem here is that better the well-intentioned blunders and shortcomings of white liberal America than the smug satirical nihilism of the narrator. I will give kudos to Lorrie Moore for creating such an obnoxious narcissistic narrator, except I'm not sure this was her intention. When she turns down a date with the creepy husband of her employer at the end I think you're supposed to feel she has achieved maturity but my feeling was the pair deserved each other and would make a good match. On the plus side there were lots of great sentences. It's interesting to learn she seems to favour short stories as I can imagine her being much better suited to this form. As a novelist I'm afraid I found her essentially ham-fisted and irritating.
Its most interesting aspect is its criticism of white liberal America. The problem here is that better the well-intentioned blunders and shortcomings of white liberal America than the smug satirical nihilism of the narrator. I will give kudos to Lorrie Moore for creating such an obnoxious narcissistic narrator, except I'm not sure this was her intention. When she turns down a date with the creepy husband of her employer at the end I think you're supposed to feel she has achieved maturity but my feeling was the pair deserved each other and would make a good match. On the plus side there were lots of great sentences. It's interesting to learn she seems to favour short stories as I can imagine her being much better suited to this form. As a novelist I'm afraid I found her essentially ham-fisted and irritating.
Well, this book is a mess. Moore never seems to quite have a grasp on her protagonist, so for most of the book I didn't either. The final third of the book is so good, but it barely seems connected to the first two-thirds. She steers the narrative around to make jokes and puns (does Tassie wear a padded water bra early in the book just so that when she stops wearing it, she can say "the jug-jig is up"? Because it felt like that). But then Moore will write something like "I tried to live cautiously -- or eventually learned to try to live -- in a spirit of regret prevention, and I could not see how Bonnie could accomplish such a thing in this situation. Regret -- operatic, oceanic, fathomless -- seemed to stretch before her in every direction. No matter which path she took, regret would stain her feet and scratch her arms and rain down on her, lightlessly and lifelong. It had already begun" and I would be back on board. Such gorgeous writing in service of such a mish-mash of a plot! Alas.
I will not say much here because it would be rather mean. But I did not like this book at all & I have to lead a book group next month on it. :(. I would actually give it less then 1 star if I could!!!
‰ЫПI didn‰ЫЄt know whether this was interesting ‰ЫУ that we were both thinking the same gruesome thing ‰ЫУ or even whether it was actually the case. Perhaps it was just rhetorical ESP: Kreskin‰ЫЄs Guide to Etiquette. But even if it was true, that we were about to say the same thing, did this connect us in some deep, private way? Or was it just a random obviousness shared between strangers? The deeper life between two people I had yet to read with confidence. It seemed a kind of vaporous text that kept revising its very alphabet.‰Ыќ
‰ЫПI was like every kid who had grown up in the country, allowing the weather ‰ЫУ good or bad ‰ЫУ to describe life for me: its mocking, its magic, its contradictions, its moody grip. Why not? One was helpless before everything.‰Ыќ
‰ЫПI was like every kid who had grown up in the country, allowing the weather ‰ЫУ good or bad ‰ЫУ to describe life for me: its mocking, its magic, its contradictions, its moody grip. Why not? One was helpless before everything.‰Ыќ
The writing was sometimes very good, with some interesting descriptions, but I felt that several plots and subplots were developed to an extent and then just dropped, never to be heard of again. This was very frustrating, and as a result I just never felt that I really got anywhere with the book. I enjoyed it enough to keep reading, but I don't think I'd recommend it.
When I picked it up in the shop, I thought "this will either be really good literature, and worth reading for that reason, or it will be some nice easy chick-lit about a babysitter, and a good relaxing, holiday-type read". It turned out to be neither, and in fact, I'm not even sure what type of book I would classify it as. In the end, it turned out to just be something to read to pass the time, nothing more.
When I picked it up in the shop, I thought "this will either be really good literature, and worth reading for that reason, or it will be some nice easy chick-lit about a babysitter, and a good relaxing, holiday-type read". It turned out to be neither, and in fact, I'm not even sure what type of book I would classify it as. In the end, it turned out to just be something to read to pass the time, nothing more.
A poignant story and a quick read. Nicely told, but I found I didn't get particularly attached to the characters. My heart wrenched for Tassie when they took Emmie away, and I was saddened by the loss of her brother, but I wasn't so close to the characters that I wept for their pain. (Unusual for me - I cry at damn near anything.)
The best part of this book was the last 5 pages (and I don’t mean that as a compliment)
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
I really enjoyed this book. Although it seemed quite slow to start, I ended up really getting into it. I love Tassie, the narrator, and her descriptions of the world around her. The book deals with traumatic events in such poignant ways, it just pulls you in and captivates attention. I loved the parallels with Jane Eyre, especially the explicit reference in the final line.