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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
There's a line about a third of the way through the novel where the narrator mentions a book club she was in saying, "It was more of a grad seminar than a book club." If you eliminate the word 'club' from that line it perfectly describes the Lost Children Archive. It has a lot of speculative words spoken to no one in particular, name drops a lot of important books, laments that children don't read Cormac McCarthy novels, throws poetic verse into the discussion randomly, it seems to never end and you don't take much away from it (even though you'll never admit that to your peers lest you come off as a philistine). Every action, no matter how banal, is laced with Deep, Important Meaning. We are meant to highlight each line so we can quote it in perfect MLA-style in our reaction papers later. I particularly liked the scene where the narrator takes her preschooler's storytelling assignment—a page of four boxes labeled 'character,' 'beginning,' 'middle,' 'end'—and adds additional boxes but leaves them blank to challenge the teacher's rigid modes of narrative structure. Dude, tear down that hegemony!
Part II is a little off the topic, but I like the last part the best.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This book has so many moving parts. A nice creative endeavor worth reading.
Some books challenge our expectations of what a novel is or what it should be. "Lost Children Archive" is a case in point. Ostensibly a "road novel", it shows us a family (a husband, a wife and their respective son and daughter from previous marriages) on a road trip between New York and Arizona. The couple met when they were working on a documentary project on the various languages of New York. However, their latest projects seem to be pulling them apart: the husband becomes obsessed with the last of the Apaches whereas the wife is planning a sound documentary on children detained at the border. It is clear that the family is breaking up, but this internal division becomes itself a symbol of families of migrants forcibly split apart.
In classic "post-modern" fashion, the narrative teases out links between the various strands of the story; sways between realism and fantasy/magical realism; and incorporates into the story such unlikely items as inventories of the contents of the boxes accompanying the family on the trip.
Much as I appreciate the work's originality and admire its complexity, I must admit that finishing this book was a challenge to me. Its best parts were brilliant, but there were points when I started asking myself whether the novel was being too clever for its own good. So I'll go for three stars on this - I don't doubt it's a very good (and very topical) novel, and others have rightly extolled its virtues. However, I can't say I really enjoyed it...
In classic "post-modern" fashion, the narrative teases out links between the various strands of the story; sways between realism and fantasy/magical realism; and incorporates into the story such unlikely items as inventories of the contents of the boxes accompanying the family on the trip.
Much as I appreciate the work's originality and admire its complexity, I must admit that finishing this book was a challenge to me. Its best parts were brilliant, but there were points when I started asking myself whether the novel was being too clever for its own good. So I'll go for three stars on this - I don't doubt it's a very good (and very topical) novel, and others have rightly extolled its virtues. However, I can't say I really enjoyed it...