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3.33 AVERAGE
3.33 AVERAGE
If I had something else to read or been able to make it to the library I probably wouldn't have finished this book. Non of the characters were likable and I didn't really care what happened to them or what happened in Siracusa. I didn't see what coming but that might have been because I wasn't very vested in this book.
This is a story of two couples who vacation together on an island in Sicily, Italy. The relationships were complicated which gave the entire trip a sense of tension. I particularly liked how the author switched between characters for each chapter so we were able to get each one's different perspective which was colored by what that character knew and didn't know. As an outside observer it was up to us to figure out what was real. Very interesting.
Lizzie is the only character who deserved anything and at first I might’ve disliked her but she really turned out to be the best character in the whole book. Also. I’m terrified of Snow.
I ended up really liking this book, which was told from the perspective of four adults in two marriages. It read like a thriller and travelogue combined as the couples embarked on a group trip to Rome and Siracusa. The author could have done a better job differentiating the perspectives,...they were all written in a similar manner, but I found her writing witty and the dialogue punchy. I wouldn't say its a great literary book with amazing sentences and metaphors, but I found it a fun "beach read" type.
I had such high hopes for this book, but it could not even begin to live up to them. My hopes were not the reason I dislike this book; it was an unenjoyable slog regardless of what I wanted. There were 5 main characters, 4 of which were given POV chapters, and yet not a single one ended being more than a one-dimensional parody of a person. Lizzie is the good wife with a diminishing (or diminished) career, riding the coattails of her husband. She is willfully oblivious to her husbands concerns and seems to build her entire being around being his wife. Michael is a wanna-be F. Scott. He thinks he's amazing yet can't get lightning to strike twice. He definitely hits every box in the self-destructive artist cliche, but it comes off as whiny rather than tragic. Finn is the selfish man-child who can't take responsibility for anything important and is always looking for the next fun thing. He's pretty oblivious to others' well-being, just a stereotypical male lead. Taylor is the neurotic, insecure, and snobbish wife who has no function outside of her daughter's life.
The four characters do not deviate from their prescribed set of cliches throughout the entire book. The only character that would likely have been of interest was the regretfully named Snow, Taylor's daughter, yet she gets no chance to tell her story. The entire story revolves around these 2 married couples, almost all of whom hate their spouse and wish they had married the other spouse, and adultery. It isn't interesting adultery, based around hard questions of betrayal, morality, or dissociation between body and emotion. It is merely a plot point to help drive the final twist and provide some momentum for change. Absent the adultery these characters would have maintained a static existence. Honestly, I would have been happy if they had all been killed off in a fiery crash because they were insufferable and without redemption.
Do not get me wrong; I have no problem with unlikeable leads. Sometimes the protagonist has to be alien for the story to get its point across. Other times it provides a sense of karma when the protagonist fails. In successful stories with unlikeable protagonists, however, the unlikeability must serve a purpose to the story. Here the characters were insufferable for the sake of being insufferable. I get the feeling Ms. Ephron settled on 4 archetypes and then tried to make the characters as unique as possible by adhering strictly and unwaveringly to the archetypes themselves.
If you want to here generally well off people complain about their lives while spouting freshmen level psuedo philosophy and maintaining insufferable yet static personalities, then you may like this book.
The four characters do not deviate from their prescribed set of cliches throughout the entire book. The only character that would likely have been of interest was the regretfully named Snow, Taylor's daughter, yet she gets no chance to tell her story. The entire story revolves around these 2 married couples, almost all of whom hate their spouse and wish they had married the other spouse, and adultery. It isn't interesting adultery, based around hard questions of betrayal, morality, or dissociation between body and emotion. It is merely a plot point to help drive the final twist and provide some momentum for change. Absent the adultery these characters would have maintained a static existence. Honestly, I would have been happy if they had all been killed off in a fiery crash because they were insufferable and without redemption.
Do not get me wrong; I have no problem with unlikeable leads. Sometimes the protagonist has to be alien for the story to get its point across. Other times it provides a sense of karma when the protagonist fails. In successful stories with unlikeable protagonists, however, the unlikeability must serve a purpose to the story. Here the characters were insufferable for the sake of being insufferable. I get the feeling Ms. Ephron settled on 4 archetypes and then tried to make the characters as unique as possible by adhering strictly and unwaveringly to the archetypes themselves.
If you want to here generally well off people complain about their lives while spouting freshmen level psuedo philosophy and maintaining insufferable yet static personalities, then you may like this book.
Siracusa is one of those books where not much happens but so much is going on. It focuses on character development, and Delia Ephron did an A+ job on the creation of dynamic, interesting, and believable characters. I felt a connection to all of them and bought into their personalities, their backstories and histories, and their decisions and justifications.
The book is told from the points of view of the four major adult characters (Lizzie, Michael, Taylor, and Finn); Snow is the daughter of Taylor and Finn, and even though we never see her point of view, we still see her through the eyes of the four adults, and she becomes this constant factor that keeps all of the characters connected. She adds a new and exciting element.
And while we're on the topic of Snow...
The story was paced well, too. This easily could have turned into a bunch of whiny adults constantly sulking over the same issues. It happens all too often. But Ephron kept the story moving. She didn't linger on the melodramatic any longer than needed, and she kept the marital issues interesting by constantly introducing new insight and background to the characters and relationships.
I just thought Siracusa was really well done. Well written. Great execution. A well-rounded look into the themes of marriage, friendship, parenthood, and travel. I give the highest recommendation.
The book is told from the points of view of the four major adult characters (Lizzie, Michael, Taylor, and Finn); Snow is the daughter of Taylor and Finn, and even though we never see her point of view, we still see her through the eyes of the four adults, and she becomes this constant factor that keeps all of the characters connected. She adds a new and exciting element.
And while we're on the topic of Snow...
Spoiler
At the very beginning, I thought she was simply shy and quiet. And perhaps Taylor coddled her a little bit. But I quickly caught on that there was something not quite right about her. I really did think that Snow would turn out to be a psychopath who would eventually go on to shoot up her school, kill her parents, or both. However, the whole time I thought these scenarios would be left to the imagination. I thought Ephron gave us great context clues about the warped mind of Snow, and I liked being lead to believe that we would never know exactly what was up with her. A great mystery. So when we discover that Snow murders Kath, I was shocked. In a way, I'm glad this happened in the story. It confirmed my suspicions that Snow was psycho. But at the same time, I think I would have enjoyed a little bit of a cliffhanger in this regard just as much.The story was paced well, too. This easily could have turned into a bunch of whiny adults constantly sulking over the same issues. It happens all too often. But Ephron kept the story moving. She didn't linger on the melodramatic any longer than needed, and she kept the marital issues interesting by constantly introducing new insight and background to the characters and relationships.
I just thought Siracusa was really well done. Well written. Great execution. A well-rounded look into the themes of marriage, friendship, parenthood, and travel. I give the highest recommendation.
This is like A Room with a View turned on its head. Italy is once again called upon to move characters closer to the truth of who they are. But there’s nothing romantic about the rite of passage here. Behind a thin film of sophisticated civility the four characters in this novel are as infantile, sterile, deluded and ultimately deplorable as each other. They barely share a quality between them. It might have been a better book had the author balanced the shortcomings with some qualities, which perhaps she tried to do with two of the characters, Lizzie and Fin, but for me failed to achieve because there’s often something even more despicable about a tyrant’s fawning disciples than the tyrant himself and Lizzie and Fin were a bit pathetic in their craven subservience to their respective egomaniacal spouses.
Each character narrates his or her version of events as if to a psychoanalyst. It becomes a kind of contest as to who is the most reprehensible. I can imagine this would make a lively topic of debate for a book club.
Because the characters are so closeted in their own egos, so uninspiring as individuals, Siracusa dragged a bit for me until about the half way point when it suddenly fizzes into life as we realise all four will get their fully deserved come uppance. The last half I enjoyed immensely. And the delights of Siracusa itself, especially the food, brought some much needed life affirming animation with which to contrast all the competitive self-serving naval gazing.
Each character narrates his or her version of events as if to a psychoanalyst. It becomes a kind of contest as to who is the most reprehensible. I can imagine this would make a lively topic of debate for a book club.
Because the characters are so closeted in their own egos, so uninspiring as individuals, Siracusa dragged a bit for me until about the half way point when it suddenly fizzes into life as we realise all four will get their fully deserved come uppance. The last half I enjoyed immensely. And the delights of Siracusa itself, especially the food, brought some much needed life affirming animation with which to contrast all the competitive self-serving naval gazing.
Two couples spend a week in Italy and it's not until the very last page that even one mention of tiramisu is brought up. That should tell you what kind of twisted characters these people are.
In all seriousness, though, I thoroughly enjoyed this. If you've ever been on a vacation with another couple, or even with a group of friends, you'll know that at times tensions can be high and you never truly *know* someone until you've been on vacation with them. Michael and Lizzie travel to Italy with Taylor and Finn and their daughter, Snow. Unsurprisingly, both couples are hiding secrets from their spouses and it's the setting of Siracusa where things come to a head and chaos ensues. This was such a fun read that I flew through it. I hate to use the term "summer read", but I'd say this was a perfect choice.
In all seriousness, though, I thoroughly enjoyed this. If you've ever been on a vacation with another couple, or even with a group of friends, you'll know that at times tensions can be high and you never truly *know* someone until you've been on vacation with them. Michael and Lizzie travel to Italy with Taylor and Finn and their daughter, Snow. Unsurprisingly, both couples are hiding secrets from their spouses and it's the setting of Siracusa where things come to a head and chaos ensues. This was such a fun read that I flew through it. I hate to use the term "summer read", but I'd say this was a perfect choice.
https://librocubicultarist.com/2016/07/24/siracusa-by-delia-ephron/