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A review by atomic_tourist
The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCracken
The Giant's House was so... unnecessary. McCracken's narrator, Peggy, doesn't understand that a storyteller should "show, not tell" their emotions to the audience. Do we ever, organically, get the sense that she was in love with James? Not at all, but Peggy keeps reminding us "I was in love with him." Throughout the highs and lows of Peggy's story, the only way to know how she feels is that she explicitly tells us; her "voice" as a narrator is monotone and even when she is supposedly heartbroken, there's never any true depth to her emotions.
That could be forgivable if there was at least an interesting plot. But no! The novel is 300 long pages of nothing happening. It's just Peggy going on rants about being a librarian... It's easy to wonder, as a reader, if McCracken was projecting her own thoughts and feelings onto Peggy. As an author (and a woman author at that!) maybe she's also insecure about her lack of experience in life and her withdrawn existence. (You know, not to stereotype authors or anything...) Perhaps Peggy offers McCracken some vicarious redemption? That's just about the only reason I can think of for someone to write such a boring main character.
Also, you'd think the fact that James is 8 feet tall would somehow contribute to the story, but it truly doesn't. It just feels like a shiny gimmick. Back to my original grievance, Peggy keeps having to remind us of how tall he is. Otherwise, we could literally forget about his height because it is so fucking irrelevant. (Clearly, he would never have had his own cottage or gone to the circus if he was short, but those things also felt unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Though the main issue with this book is that it all felt unimportant.)
And last, but certainly not least-- why the fuck are you writing a romance novel about a 30-year-old woman and a teenager? This was, yet again, another flop from the Miami Book Fair.
That could be forgivable if there was at least an interesting plot. But no! The novel is 300 long pages of nothing happening. It's just Peggy going on rants about being a librarian... It's easy to wonder, as a reader, if McCracken was projecting her own thoughts and feelings onto Peggy. As an author (and a woman author at that!) maybe she's also insecure about her lack of experience in life and her withdrawn existence. (You know, not to stereotype authors or anything...) Perhaps Peggy offers McCracken some vicarious redemption? That's just about the only reason I can think of for someone to write such a boring main character.
Also, you'd think the fact that James is 8 feet tall would somehow contribute to the story, but it truly doesn't. It just feels like a shiny gimmick. Back to my original grievance, Peggy keeps having to remind us of how tall he is. Otherwise, we could literally forget about his height because it is so fucking irrelevant. (Clearly, he would never have had his own cottage or gone to the circus if he was short, but those things also felt unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Though the main issue with this book is that it all felt unimportant.)
And last, but certainly not least-- why the fuck are you writing a romance novel about a 30-year-old woman and a teenager? This was, yet again, another flop from the Miami Book Fair.