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3.41 AVERAGE
3.41 AVERAGE
bleh. I liked some of this book a lot - I loved the idea of the Chronicles and the relationship between the siblings. I also liked the treatment of time and memory (2nd book in a row for me - last book was Sense of an Ending). But I just didn't love this book - never felt enough energy and I never cared enough about the characters. I also didn't feel that the news pieces within the story really fit in. They felt extraneous.
Hmmm, it's a little...postmodern? For me. I think I expected more plot based on the summary. Like it was somehow going to take a gripping turn. I thought some of the descriptions of the music scene really detailed and the depiction of the sibling relationship was so authentic and genuine. But it didn't speak to me or move me particularly.
I have a love hate relationship with this book. it started out pretty tough to read got good then was slow again but i think the ending was great. i could relate to denise so much and i loved and hated her at times too. would love to read eat the document next
For some reason, I just wasn't engaged by this book or the characters. I wanted to like it, and there was "much to admire here" (as agents seem to say in their rejections), but in the end it felt slight. I'm feeling that way a lot these days when reading books that are under 300 pages.
The book misses on every level. Oh, there are paragraphs here and there of fine writing and phrases, there are the starts of intelligent explorations of memory, family, rock and roll musicians, holding on to love, but then phytttttt. In reading this, it feels like a lit firecracker which unexpectedly goes out. The story doesn't explore anything enough with any theme or topic. This novel would have made a better short story, especially if it had focused on the characters of Denise and her mother.
My frustration peaked by the middle of the book. Reading was like being on a treadmill, mileposts passed but no change. No characters stand out and they all seem too ordinary for a book. No tension. Nothing happens. They wake up, go to work, drive home, call on each other and say hi, go home to bed, sleep. Done.
Nic is a musician who apparently has spent decades making CDs for his family that consist of experimental sounds rather than music, (which we can't hear since we are reading a book which makes the pages referring to his music excruciatingly boring after the first five or so pages discussing it). His sister, Denise, appreciates Nik for 235 pages, which is also excruciating dull to read. Yawn. Nik is a boring person. He never shows his work in public, he never has a real job for long, and he has no family contacts except for Denise, her daughter Ava, and his mother. The book's primary focus is on Nik and his Chronicles. The Chronicles consist of revelations which could be either slightly altered versions of his real life or faked PR releases (which I skimmed).
(When is the last time you've read through all of the ads in a magazine or catalog, word by word? Well, that is exactly what half of Nic's chronicles consist of, which means half of this book is nothing but fictionalized ad copy. Which means a third of this book is similar to slogging through 1,000,000 pages of Rolling Stone Magazine music reviews one after another. Hold that thought in your mind for a minute. That's how excruciating of a read this was to me.)
Denise, when not admiring her brother for another million pages, is helping her mother through the middle stage of Early Onset Alzheimer's. This is the most interesting part of the book. Unfortunately, the interactions between Denise and her mother amount to only about 40 pages, but it highlights most movingly that the family is losing its past through inertia and memory loss. The history of generations is fading from everyone's mind. The family is losing not only its stories, it's losing meaning.
Denise is deeply frightened by her mother's illness and her brother's poor health, since he hardly ever leaves his rented house, and since all he does is make experimental sounds and fake ad copy, he has no money. Denise thinks he's a genius (not that there is any proof of that in the book except Denise's feeling). She's frightened that she will lose both her brother and mother, which means she won't have anyone in her life to support her memories. Both her mother, through her failing brain, and her brother, with his fake diaries, have been rewriting all of the real memories of Denise's life. She is frightened that when both ARE gone, her memories will be compromised.
What was the reason for writing this book about a family of four boring, do nothing, go nowhere, say nothing, meet no one people that spend all minutes admiring one brother who does the least living except for the creativity which remains private in his head, in his Chronicles and on unlistenable CD's? If the novel was supposed to be a literary enlightenment or exploration of a dying family, it was a horrendously boring ick way to do this, too boringly done, so boring I couldn't pick up ANYTHING interesting about this family. If the theme was about memory, that has been done much better elsewhere. If it's about creative process, there REALLY is only a hint of that. If it's about rock and roll, well, again there was a page or two and then it was done. About Denise, a character obsessed with her brother and fearful of losing her mother? So obsessed she lives her life wasting it through admiring her brother and his 'art' and watching CNN in her spare time hopelessly crying over the ephemeral passing of news? I made it sound more interesting here than it did in reading it in the book.
For me, an utter waste of time. What am I missing?
My frustration peaked by the middle of the book. Reading was like being on a treadmill, mileposts passed but no change. No characters stand out and they all seem too ordinary for a book. No tension. Nothing happens. They wake up, go to work, drive home, call on each other and say hi, go home to bed, sleep. Done.
Nic is a musician who apparently has spent decades making CDs for his family that consist of experimental sounds rather than music, (which we can't hear since we are reading a book which makes the pages referring to his music excruciatingly boring after the first five or so pages discussing it). His sister, Denise, appreciates Nik for 235 pages, which is also excruciating dull to read. Yawn. Nik is a boring person. He never shows his work in public, he never has a real job for long, and he has no family contacts except for Denise, her daughter Ava, and his mother. The book's primary focus is on Nik and his Chronicles. The Chronicles consist of revelations which could be either slightly altered versions of his real life or faked PR releases (which I skimmed).
(When is the last time you've read through all of the ads in a magazine or catalog, word by word? Well, that is exactly what half of Nic's chronicles consist of, which means half of this book is nothing but fictionalized ad copy. Which means a third of this book is similar to slogging through 1,000,000 pages of Rolling Stone Magazine music reviews one after another. Hold that thought in your mind for a minute. That's how excruciating of a read this was to me.)
Denise, when not admiring her brother for another million pages, is helping her mother through the middle stage of Early Onset Alzheimer's. This is the most interesting part of the book. Unfortunately, the interactions between Denise and her mother amount to only about 40 pages, but it highlights most movingly that the family is losing its past through inertia and memory loss. The history of generations is fading from everyone's mind. The family is losing not only its stories, it's losing meaning.
Denise is deeply frightened by her mother's illness and her brother's poor health, since he hardly ever leaves his rented house, and since all he does is make experimental sounds and fake ad copy, he has no money. Denise thinks he's a genius (not that there is any proof of that in the book except Denise's feeling). She's frightened that she will lose both her brother and mother, which means she won't have anyone in her life to support her memories. Both her mother, through her failing brain, and her brother, with his fake diaries, have been rewriting all of the real memories of Denise's life. She is frightened that when both ARE gone, her memories will be compromised.
What was the reason for writing this book about a family of four boring, do nothing, go nowhere, say nothing, meet no one people that spend all minutes admiring one brother who does the least living except for the creativity which remains private in his head, in his Chronicles and on unlistenable CD's? If the novel was supposed to be a literary enlightenment or exploration of a dying family, it was a horrendously boring ick way to do this, too boringly done, so boring I couldn't pick up ANYTHING interesting about this family. If the theme was about memory, that has been done much better elsewhere. If it's about creative process, there REALLY is only a hint of that. If it's about rock and roll, well, again there was a page or two and then it was done. About Denise, a character obsessed with her brother and fearful of losing her mother? So obsessed she lives her life wasting it through admiring her brother and his 'art' and watching CNN in her spare time hopelessly crying over the ephemeral passing of news? I made it sound more interesting here than it did in reading it in the book.
For me, an utter waste of time. What am I missing?
Languid in its telling and moving in parts, it won't top my year's list but probably won't be the last my shelves see of Spiotta, either.
I love her writing and I truly fell in love with these characters. Very inventive and engrossing.
I really really wanted to love this book after hearing a lot of great things about it. Instead, I merely liked it and was put off by the neurotic main character and her obsessions with the news/maybe having memory loss. It made it very hard for me to get into the story and care about the books world.
dark
slow-paced