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kate_elizabeth's review against another edition
1.0
No. Just no. I checked this book out because "Evening," a book I love, had a recommendation for it. It's long, it doesn't have much of a plot and it's not very interesting. Mr. Casey can write, but just no. NO. I never would have thought that a book about a marriage destroyed by a lesbian affair could be so boring. Just. No.
thetamouse's review
4.0
There seems to be a current of suspicion around this book. Perhaps it's of misogyny; perhaps it's that the characters are a bit too ideal, too intelligent. That the book lacks a plot. The reviews I'm seeing are hesitant to either damn or praise it. I loved it.
It's not entirely realistic. I certainly don't know people like this in their conversations or their idealized self awareness and awareness of others. Most poignant is all of the character's ability to see the lack of self awareness in the father (Mike) and to inscribe meaning on him. I'm not sure these people exist. But they don't need to. The book functions more like a map for me. These characters aren't scale models. They don't reduce to something believable but they do offer some birds eye view of ourselves.
And maybe it is too masculine and even too much a caricature of that masculinity but, as a man, I see an awful lot of myself as Mike struggles to figure out a place in this world. The cartooonish masculine tacitness is there, though it seems to intimate that there is a painful thing in that and an arrogance in remaining that way: quiet in pain, removed, long struggling and well suited for the burdon. This definition of being a man is there and it bears the moral that a maturity is reached as we give up the idea of ourselves as incredibly special. As we stop being the center of the world we become something better. It's a struggle for me, for sure.
The prose is great. Casey is a focused and intense writer. All the middle aged angst and drifting without compass is painful and bleak, but - again - instructional. I think it penetrates and makes a reader uncomfortable. If it's misogynistic, it may be indicting our own lingering misogyny. If these people are shallow or merely apt narrators of an internal life it may be an accusation of our own poverty or emotional reflex to describe as a means to hide from life.
If the relationships are aimed badly and doomed by the self centered ness of the characters maybe this is some painful reflection.
I found myself oddly moved and looking forward to revisiting. Better braced for confronting myself, I hope.
It's not entirely realistic. I certainly don't know people like this in their conversations or their idealized self awareness and awareness of others. Most poignant is all of the character's ability to see the lack of self awareness in the father (Mike) and to inscribe meaning on him. I'm not sure these people exist. But they don't need to. The book functions more like a map for me. These characters aren't scale models. They don't reduce to something believable but they do offer some birds eye view of ourselves.
And maybe it is too masculine and even too much a caricature of that masculinity but, as a man, I see an awful lot of myself as Mike struggles to figure out a place in this world. The cartooonish masculine tacitness is there, though it seems to intimate that there is a painful thing in that and an arrogance in remaining that way: quiet in pain, removed, long struggling and well suited for the burdon. This definition of being a man is there and it bears the moral that a maturity is reached as we give up the idea of ourselves as incredibly special. As we stop being the center of the world we become something better. It's a struggle for me, for sure.
The prose is great. Casey is a focused and intense writer. All the middle aged angst and drifting without compass is painful and bleak, but - again - instructional. I think it penetrates and makes a reader uncomfortable. If it's misogynistic, it may be indicting our own lingering misogyny. If these people are shallow or merely apt narrators of an internal life it may be an accusation of our own poverty or emotional reflex to describe as a means to hide from life.
If the relationships are aimed badly and doomed by the self centered ness of the characters maybe this is some painful reflection.
I found myself oddly moved and looking forward to revisiting. Better braced for confronting myself, I hope.
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