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A review by jimmyjamesnickels
Carry the One by Carol Anshaw
3.0
There was good and bad with this book, never more one than the other to push the scales effectively one way. On one side, it is undeniable that this is a very talented author with a wonderful ability for lyrical, poetic turns of the phrase. However, the enjoyment I derived from reading work by an writer talented enough to seem more artist than author was greatly lessened by the fact I didn't really care for the book itself. I can appreciate it for the sum of it's parts, but the whole was just not that great. It's a paradox, I suppose...I enjoyed this book, but I didn't like it.
A major problem I had was with the characters themselves, also in how the passage of time was handled. The 'voice' of each character is almost unchanging from one to the next, they're all liberal and self important sorts with an airy-fairy approach to what happens to them. This is especially egregious with the sisters, Carmen and Alice...unless specific indicators were used early on in the chapters, if their partners were named for example, the characters/voice/motivation/etc for the two sisters was so interchangeable it seemed almost pointless to have two separate characters in the first place. Frankly, the sexual orientation of the two women seemed the only major defining difference between them, other than that you could have meshed the two into one character with no big differences in the flow of the plot. Further, it was generally impossible to determine the passage of time from one chapter to the next...sometimes a chapter would begin and it flowed chronologically, other times you'd read a few pages and there'd be an offhand mention of a new president or a child would randomly be aged up five years.
Also, the book and it's characters can be laughably pretentious at times. Pompous, even. There's a heavy degree of Captain Tryhard with these characters, in the sense we're dealing with Special, Exceptionally Deep, Artistic types who are Special and Weird, who feel things more deeply and authentically than mundies. All that's missing is a kid with a video camera filming a plastic bag in the breeze, whispering "I'm not...normal." But! I am willing to believe that this is done deliberately, not necessarily in the sense of being tongue in cheek but more ...self aware, I suppose. Taking the piss on pretentious arteests. This was especially apparent to me with but again...perhaps that in and of itself is the point: Bad things happen, they happen to deep thinkers and pretentious artists, they happen to common folk, to anyone. And one way or another, life still goes plodding on and this book showcases a slice of how life does indeed go on.
I begin this review by saying I both liked and disliked the book, and then spend the whole of the review bashing it. :p A bit unbalanced, maybe? This isn't a bad book, as I said it is exceptionally well written and the author's mastery of the written word truly did draw me in at times. It's just not the book for me, I acknowledge this. It was still a good book, just not my cup of tea.
A major problem I had was with the characters themselves, also in how the passage of time was handled. The 'voice' of each character is almost unchanging from one to the next, they're all liberal and self important sorts with an airy-fairy approach to what happens to them. This is especially egregious with the sisters, Carmen and Alice...unless specific indicators were used early on in the chapters, if their partners were named for example, the characters/voice/motivation/etc for the two sisters was so interchangeable it seemed almost pointless to have two separate characters in the first place. Frankly, the sexual orientation of the two women seemed the only major defining difference between them, other than that you could have meshed the two into one character with no big differences in the flow of the plot. Further, it was generally impossible to determine the passage of time from one chapter to the next...sometimes a chapter would begin and it flowed chronologically, other times you'd read a few pages and there'd be an offhand mention of a new president or a child would randomly be aged up five years.
Also, the book and it's characters can be laughably pretentious at times. Pompous, even. There's a heavy degree of Captain Tryhard with these characters, in the sense we're dealing with Special, Exceptionally Deep, Artistic types who are Special and Weird, who feel things more deeply and authentically than mundies. All that's missing is a kid with a video camera filming a plastic bag in the breeze, whispering "I'm not...normal." But! I am willing to believe that this is done deliberately, not necessarily in the sense of being tongue in cheek but more ...self aware, I suppose. Taking the piss on pretentious arteests. This was especially apparent to me with
Spoiler
the reveal of Carmen's husband's affair. She goes to great pains to assure the reader, her husbands affair with the nineteen year old babysitter is NOT tawdry and cliched like the affairs of other middle aged men and their post adolescent babysitters because Reasons. The tawdry, embarrassing part is something that happens to Other people, lesser people.I begin this review by saying I both liked and disliked the book, and then spend the whole of the review bashing it. :p A bit unbalanced, maybe? This isn't a bad book, as I said it is exceptionally well written and the author's mastery of the written word truly did draw me in at times. It's just not the book for me, I acknowledge this. It was still a good book, just not my cup of tea.