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2.9 AVERAGE
2.9 AVERAGE
I enjoyed this, though felt I missed a lot due to my own unfamiliarity with Dante and Judaism. I loved the core of Shira, Andi, and Ahmad & wasn't as interested in Romei and Benny. When it started to come together, I had to go back to read some parts I hadn't been interested in at the time. Enjoyed this & wish I had better background knowledge to appreciate it more.
I read all the way until page 6. This was the scene where our "heroine" Shira shows the reader around her apartment. She writes, "My room, next to Andi's, was rather bare, though I'd lived in Ahmad's apartment since before Andi was born: a few posters tacked to the wall-- Corot's Isola Tiberina, Caravaggio's Calling of St. Matthew. A single bed (natch), the obligatory rag rug."
The Calling of St. Matthew situated on the same line as the word "natch" was enough for me to know the rest. Good on Paper is just another self-congratulatory farce of a postmodern book.
The Calling of St. Matthew situated on the same line as the word "natch" was enough for me to know the rest. Good on Paper is just another self-congratulatory farce of a postmodern book.
Uggghhhh it took everything in me to finish this one. I thought about DNF-ing it but I kept reading, figuring it had to get better. It wasn't until around page 200 that it finally picked up.
My number one complaint about this book is the ridiculous style of the dialogue. The lack of quotation marks makes it nearly impossible to follow the dialogue.
I also was very confused throughout the book about who was a character and who was being referenced from Dante.
All in all, not worth the time I spent reading and waiting for it to get better.
My number one complaint about this book is the ridiculous style of the dialogue. The lack of quotation marks makes it nearly impossible to follow the dialogue.
I also was very confused throughout the book about who was a character and who was being referenced from Dante.
All in all, not worth the time I spent reading and waiting for it to get better.
It is a bit hard to read a book when I have a rare weekend off. Dallas Aunt comes to town, and finally I am free to do what I want to do: hang with friends, go see all the foreign films I've been meaning to see (Embrace of the Serpent and Son of Saul being great films and highly recommended by me.) Rachel Cantor's new novel Good On Paper finally arrived for me at the library, but my I was ready to party down as much as I party down nowadays.
The problem is I really had to read this as quickly as possible judging from the list of books on hold I have with the library. About four of them are becoming available at the same time despite my best attempts to time them out. Fortunately since I hate driving and took public transit as much as I could, it gave me some good chunks of time to spend reading.
Here is a novel about a down-on-her-luck translator in New York City named Shira getting a seeming dream job translating the new work of a Nobel Prize winning Romanian/Italian poet Romei while trying to keep her makeshift family and life together. The first half of the novel builds the pressure in her life until it comes out exploding about 2/3 of the way through.
I'll admit I enjoyed Samantha Hunt's Mr. Splitfoot a lot more than Good on Paper. I wasn't as engrossed as I was in the former. Then again that could be the symptom of reading the first 100 pages while on transit. It's a perfectly fine novel, although one thing lingered as I finished the epilogue.
At the point where Shira's life explodes, I thought I missed something. It was certainly written with the intent of the mind-blowing explosion ready to happen. "Shira! he half shouted, his coital dream cracked open like a canteloupe." "With the precision of film rolling backward, the pieces shot back into place, the shattering of my life became whole."
Cantor brings back strains of prior events as she brings this all to a climax, and perhaps it is my shortcoming that I completely missed it. I knew it was a something, but what this something was mystified me for a bit. There I had Shira in bed completely devastated, and here I was in bed more fully clothed than Shira wondering why.
Don't get me wrong, it's a great book, but I am upset that I missed the full effect of the climax. But, I suppose, that is my own personal motif.
The problem is I really had to read this as quickly as possible judging from the list of books on hold I have with the library. About four of them are becoming available at the same time despite my best attempts to time them out. Fortunately since I hate driving and took public transit as much as I could, it gave me some good chunks of time to spend reading.
Here is a novel about a down-on-her-luck translator in New York City named Shira getting a seeming dream job translating the new work of a Nobel Prize winning Romanian/Italian poet Romei while trying to keep her makeshift family and life together. The first half of the novel builds the pressure in her life until it comes out exploding about 2/3 of the way through.
I'll admit I enjoyed Samantha Hunt's Mr. Splitfoot a lot more than Good on Paper. I wasn't as engrossed as I was in the former. Then again that could be the symptom of reading the first 100 pages while on transit. It's a perfectly fine novel, although one thing lingered as I finished the epilogue.
At the point where Shira's life explodes, I thought I missed something. It was certainly written with the intent of the mind-blowing explosion ready to happen. "Shira! he half shouted, his coital dream cracked open like a canteloupe." "With the precision of film rolling backward, the pieces shot back into place, the shattering of my life became whole."
Cantor brings back strains of prior events as she brings this all to a climax, and perhaps it is my shortcoming that I completely missed it. I knew it was a something, but what this something was mystified me for a bit. There I had Shira in bed completely devastated, and here I was in bed more fully clothed than Shira wondering why.
Don't get me wrong, it's a great book, but I am upset that I missed the full effect of the climax. But, I suppose, that is my own personal motif.
Oh my goodness, this book is so good! Wholly original. I don't know what I expected from a book about a translator, but it wasn't this - or at least not quite. There are super smart observations about language and translation, as well as Dante and love, but there's also a sassy narrator with a fun precocious daughter and a chatty readable voice.
Yeah, this one is not for me.
Why does this book not have quotation/speech marks? It makes it so hard to know if the character is speaking or thinking and sometimes even who is talking at all.
Also, I just couldn't connect to the characters. Yes, they are kind of interesting, but didn't manage to grab me.
Why does this book not have quotation/speech marks? It makes it so hard to know if the character is speaking or thinking and sometimes even who is talking at all.
Also, I just couldn't connect to the characters. Yes, they are kind of interesting, but didn't manage to grab me.
I enjoyed this very much, particularly the details about translating works of poetry. For a book that incorporates aspects of Dante's works and how to translate, it was surprisingly light in tone. I didn't find the romance too convincing, but it also didn't detract from the rest of the book.
This book was mediocre until the last quarter of the book. Then it got exciting and had a happy ending. Most of it was pretentious in my opinion.
I put off reading Good on Paper for a long time after I bought it because the cover and the title were so suggestive of snappy chick lit. When I finally dug in, what I found instead was a super-smart literary "mystery" of sorts with a cast of quirky, interesting characters and a sense of humor. I wish I had realized there was an actual copy of Dante's Vita Nuova on my daughter's bookshelf, because all the better to have it beside you while you read. Cantor manages to parallel the movement of Dante's trials and tribulations with the novel's own while at the same time spinning out a charming story with a surprising twist. Look, it's not perfect. Some of Shira's back story and motivations seem superfluous (T., Jonah) while we don't know enough about other parts (because: twist) to understand her behavior at times. But smart literary mysteries are pretty niche and hard to come by. A.S. Byatt still wears the crown, but Good on Paper is smart, fun and well worth a read!