This is the second time that this slim volume has defeated me. You would think it wouldn't be hard to complete a novel of less than 200 pages, with many "chapters" that are less than one full page. You would think. But for a week now, this book has been sitting by my Reading Chair (I have a Reading Chair ....) sucking all the joy out of my life, so I think its time to do myself a favor, and kick it to the curb. That is not a metaphor ...
This is HARD, because a number of people who I love and respect, love this book. My first attempt to read it was when I was with my last Book Group, and the consensus was -- they loved it. Echos of the blurb by Hilary Mantel ( ... oh, Hilary, no, not you too!! ...) on the cover of my edition: "Writing of this quality comes from an attention to reality so exact that it goes beyond a skill and becomes a virtue."
Obviously, I don't feel that way. IMHO, writing of this quality is about as real as a wooden nickel. The central character is whiny and smug. The mother who visits her at her hospital bedside seems to bear no relationship to the mother she recalls from her abusive childhood. Her relationship with her mother is baffling. This "Mommy" locked the child Lucy in a car, when minding her was inconvenient, and compared her pubescent boobs to cows udders. I get it that Lucy is locked into some kind of Stockholm Syndrome with her mother -- but it just doesn't ring true.
The writing style is flat and humorless, and uses stylistic fakery (endless repetition, contradictions, and droning banalities) to make stupid observations sound "deep." It asks us to accept goofy observations about everything from AIDS, to parenthood, to the Inner Life of the Mind as some kind of weird emotional truth.
This is not a "This is so boooring. Why can't there be more explosions ...?" rant. I love books in which "nothing happens." I love unsympathetic characters. Recent 5-star books I have read include novels by Penelope Fitzgerald and Barbara Pym. I think what I loved most about those two authors was the sly humor, the way they punctured pomposity, and yet found an emotional truth that put heart into otherwise off-putting characters. And I'm just not finding anything like that here.
There is a quote (on page 97 of my copy), which hints strongly that Strout knows exactly what she's doing: a writer defends unpopular words she had put in the mouth of one of her characters, saying "It's not my job to make readers know what's a narrative voice and not the private view of the author ..."
But Strout is no Nabokov, and Lucy is no Humbert Humbert. I wish ...
This is HARD, because a number of people who I love and respect, love this book. My first attempt to read it was when I was with my last Book Group, and the consensus was -- they loved it. Echos of the blurb by Hilary Mantel ( ... oh, Hilary, no, not you too!! ...) on the cover of my edition: "Writing of this quality comes from an attention to reality so exact that it goes beyond a skill and becomes a virtue."
Obviously, I don't feel that way. IMHO, writing of this quality is about as real as a wooden nickel. The central character is whiny and smug. The mother who visits her at her hospital bedside seems to bear no relationship to the mother she recalls from her abusive childhood. Her relationship with her mother is baffling. This "Mommy" locked the child Lucy in a car, when minding her was inconvenient, and compared her pubescent boobs to cows udders. I get it that Lucy is locked into some kind of Stockholm Syndrome with her mother -- but it just doesn't ring true.
The writing style is flat and humorless, and uses stylistic fakery (endless repetition, contradictions, and droning banalities) to make stupid observations sound "deep." It asks us to accept goofy observations about everything from AIDS, to parenthood, to the Inner Life of the Mind as some kind of weird emotional truth.
This is not a "This is so boooring. Why can't there be more explosions ...?" rant. I love books in which "nothing happens." I love unsympathetic characters. Recent 5-star books I have read include novels by Penelope Fitzgerald and Barbara Pym. I think what I loved most about those two authors was the sly humor, the way they punctured pomposity, and yet found an emotional truth that put heart into otherwise off-putting characters. And I'm just not finding anything like that here.
There is a quote (on page 97 of my copy), which hints strongly that Strout knows exactly what she's doing: a writer defends unpopular words she had put in the mouth of one of her characters, saying "It's not my job to make readers know what's a narrative voice and not the private view of the author ..."
But Strout is no Nabokov, and Lucy is no Humbert Humbert. I wish ...
