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A review by shgmclicious
The Clasp by Sloane Crosley
Okay, so here is why I don't tend to read a lot of Literary Fiction by Well Reviewed Whites, and when I do engage, I have mixed feelings about it.
So being 30 and just enough away from high school and away from college to have Thoughts and Feels about it, this was totally the book for me, and I think it's kind of spot on for that sort of post-college, millennial feel. The book is third person, alternating three different perspectives, and the protagonists and their friends are fully fleshed out and alive. The premise as described in the flap copy isn't really the premise as it happens in the book, and the premise in the book gets realized in the way the flap copy promises rather than what such a premise would really demand, and if that doesn't make sense to you, read the book and then get back to me. Basically, I mean that
What gets me about NYT-Reviewed Literary Fiction For Adults is just how damn caucasian it all is--and I mean that literally, in what it's populated with, but also figuratively, culturally. This is one of those books that suffers from thinking it's more self aware than it actually is and not actually making a distinction between just how obnoxiously obtuse some of the characters are and how obnoxiously obtuse the author is. Case in point: pretty much any time and any way a description is given to a nonwhite person it's done in some off-color-but-not-objectively-or-aggressively-offensive-and-therefore-no-white-editor-or-white-reader-would-likely-notice-it-and-that's-the-problem-in-publishing way. Also, there's the I-put-long-portions-solely-in-French-with-no-translation-and-that's-not-objectively-a-problem-since-the-characters-all-understand-it-but-it's-another-problem-with-publishing-that-people-whine-about-brown-people-languages-not-having-translations-but-are-happy-to-let-French-slide thing that bothers me.
All in all, this was a perfectly fine read, and it's way better than, like a lot of other novels of this ilk, especially 95% of novels written by white men, and I don't feel like I wasted a read or anything, but I do think it leaves a lot to be desired and is a pretty good example of why I don't bother to do too much of this stuff.
So being 30 and just enough away from high school and away from college to have Thoughts and Feels about it, this was totally the book for me, and I think it's kind of spot on for that sort of post-college, millennial feel. The book is third person, alternating three different perspectives, and the protagonists and their friends are fully fleshed out and alive. The premise as described in the flap copy isn't really the premise as it happens in the book, and the premise in the book gets realized in the way the flap copy promises rather than what such a premise would really demand, and if that doesn't make sense to you, read the book and then get back to me. Basically, I mean that
Spoiler
the WWII and Nazi implications of what Johanna tells Victor are barely engaged with when the quest actually begins, and so really I don't know why it was there at all--Crosley could just as well have made it about a picture Victor finds interesting with an address on itWhat gets me about NYT-Reviewed Literary Fiction For Adults is just how damn caucasian it all is--and I mean that literally, in what it's populated with, but also figuratively, culturally. This is one of those books that suffers from thinking it's more self aware than it actually is and not actually making a distinction between just how obnoxiously obtuse some of the characters are and how obnoxiously obtuse the author is. Case in point: pretty much any time and any way a description is given to a nonwhite person it's done in some off-color-but-not-objectively-or-aggressively-offensive-and-therefore-no-white-editor-or-white-reader-would-likely-notice-it-and-that's-the-problem-in-publishing way. Also, there's the I-put-long-portions-solely-in-French-with-no-translation-and-that's-not-objectively-a-problem-since-the-characters-all-understand-it-but-it's-another-problem-with-publishing-that-people-whine-about-brown-people-languages-not-having-translations-but-are-happy-to-let-French-slide thing that bothers me.
All in all, this was a perfectly fine read, and it's way better than, like a lot of other novels of this ilk, especially 95% of novels written by white men, and I don't feel like I wasted a read or anything, but I do think it leaves a lot to be desired and is a pretty good example of why I don't bother to do too much of this stuff.