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theangrylawngnome's review
2.0
The literary equivalent to high-school cafeteria jello. First, It wiggles and jiggles alarmlingly, yet never actually goes anywhere. Second, there may be a logical reason for the existence of jello and of this book, but I'm putting both into the imponderable category.
Neither add much of anything that I can see. Don't get me wrong, I'm quite happy her son was, as of the end of the book, apparently doing okay. but so much of this seemed slap-dash and incoherent as though it was a first draft vomited onto a printing press, without benefit of editing or even much in the way of proof-reading, that I was left scratching my head:
¤ Hubby made Woodstock seem "too small" to her, so what the hey they get divorced
¤ And she either moves in with or rents an apartment from (the text really isn't clear) a professional clown
¤ She meets a woman who lives in a van and has lots of paintings of naked black men laying on couches packed inside it. Meaning, of course, she's found the perfect baby-sitter/nanny. Sounds like the sort of person I'd leave alone with a disabled child
¤ She brings the kid to her ex-husband's and he's not home. So she has some sort of nervous breakdown, even though...um, she was actually a day early.
Everything seems to work out okay in a sentence or two, though. After all, she's got to get on with that most tedious of games: find the famous autistic historical figure. So we get pages and pages on Einstein, Andy Warhol, Andy Kaufman some exceedingly bad poets I doubt anyone has ever heard of, or should have heard of. She also manages to demonstrate her absolute and total ignorance of Nietzsche, tossing in the false but utterly predictable canard of "anti-semite." But I suppose in her set they likely think anti-semite was his first name, and whither he goest so goest it. And of course, she couldn't include him in her game, though why she didn't is an interesting question. After all, looked at from a certain perspective you could dub the dude an Aspie, toot-sweet.
And we all go to Disneyland and go on the rides and the book ends.
There are some disconnected blobs here and there related to her son that do make for interesting reading. Why the whole book couldn't have been about him and the challenges he faced (and doubtless still faces) I have no clue. Less about this other foolishness, and more about him and I think she'd have had something. But as it is, we got us the jello book mebee topped with some of that "non-dairy" "whipped" topping they'd put on the jello sometimes. No, actually, I think that I'll retract. Cafeteria jello is an imponderable, but the "non-dairy" "whipped" topping clearly is where Cheney et al should have been looking for their WMDs. And though I obviously wasn't crazy about this book, even I balk at an unfair comparison like that, which should doubtless be reserved for the Twilights of the world, and them alone.
Neither add much of anything that I can see. Don't get me wrong, I'm quite happy her son was, as of the end of the book, apparently doing okay. but so much of this seemed slap-dash and incoherent as though it was a first draft vomited onto a printing press, without benefit of editing or even much in the way of proof-reading, that I was left scratching my head:
¤ Hubby made Woodstock seem "too small" to her, so what the hey they get divorced
¤ And she either moves in with or rents an apartment from (the text really isn't clear) a professional clown
¤ She meets a woman who lives in a van and has lots of paintings of naked black men laying on couches packed inside it. Meaning, of course, she's found the perfect baby-sitter/nanny. Sounds like the sort of person I'd leave alone with a disabled child
¤ She brings the kid to her ex-husband's and he's not home. So she has some sort of nervous breakdown, even though...um, she was actually a day early.
Everything seems to work out okay in a sentence or two, though. After all, she's got to get on with that most tedious of games: find the famous autistic historical figure. So we get pages and pages on Einstein, Andy Warhol, Andy Kaufman some exceedingly bad poets I doubt anyone has ever heard of, or should have heard of. She also manages to demonstrate her absolute and total ignorance of Nietzsche, tossing in the false but utterly predictable canard of "anti-semite." But I suppose in her set they likely think anti-semite was his first name, and whither he goest so goest it. And of course, she couldn't include him in her game, though why she didn't is an interesting question. After all, looked at from a certain perspective you could dub the dude an Aspie, toot-sweet.
And we all go to Disneyland and go on the rides and
There are some disconnected blobs here and there related to her son that do make for interesting reading. Why the whole book couldn't have been about him and the challenges he faced (and doubtless still faces) I have no clue. Less about this other foolishness, and more about him and I think she'd have had something. But as it is, we got us the jello book mebee topped with some of that "non-dairy" "whipped" topping they'd put on the jello sometimes. No, actually, I think that I'll retract. Cafeteria jello is an imponderable, but the "non-dairy" "whipped" topping clearly is where Cheney et al should have been looking for their WMDs. And though I obviously wasn't crazy about this book, even I balk at an unfair comparison like that, which should doubtless be reserved for the Twilights of the world, and them alone.
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