The Distant Hours by Kate Morton

Buried under all the mess in this book is an interesting story: As an adolescent during the London Blitz, Meredith is evacuated to a dilapidated castle in the country, the home of a writer and his three arty eccentric daughters. She immediately feels a connection to this family that she never felt with her own working class family; these people understand and value her in a way that her own parents and siblings never did. When the time comes to return to London Meredith refuses and must be dragged back by her father against her will. Though she tries to maintain her newly awakened creativity and ambition, the daily grind of her family’s disapproval and lack of support eventually defeat her and she becomes as bland and uninspired as the rest of them. It’s a really thought-provoking examination of creativity and how it can be nurtured or squashed, depending on one’s environment.

But Morton can’t seem to tell this story in a coherent manner. It’s buried under all sorts of chaff and digressions and subplots about the three odd sisters who took Meredith in, about her daughter (who is shocked to discover this episode in her mother’s past), and some mystery about a lost letter and a lost lover. Chapters jump back and forth in time randomly and for some reason the chapters set in the present have names and those set in the past are just numbered. Thus a chapter called “The Plot Thickens” is followed by a chapter called “Four.” As my dad says, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

I can’t tell you how disappointed I was. The only thing worse than a bad book is a bad book with a good book inside it.

(Book 17, 2013)

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Is it just me? Why do I dislike books that so many other people love? This is going to turn into one of those deals where everyone asks me if I liked such-and-such a book, and I have to say “nooooo…. ” and then justify my response to their astonished looks. Like Atonement. Like The Corrections. And now, The Marriage Plot.

I suppose I should describe the plot: Mitchell, Madeleine, and Lawrence graduate from Brown University. Mitchell loves Madeleine, Madeleine loves Lawrence, and Lawrence has bipolar disorder. Madeleine and Lawrence set up housekeeping together over the summer while Mitchell wanders around Europe and India. Madeleine is directionless (and boring), Mitchell is lonely (also boring), and Lawrence is hospitalized. That about sums it all up.

English majors might like this book because it will make them feel good about all the useless stuff they know. I don’t frequently come across references to Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar in my day-to-day reading, and I enjoyed those aha moments. There’s also a lot of showing off about semiotics and Roland Barthes. What is the point of this in popular fiction (or, to use Barthes’ own words “readerly text”)? Many readers (most readers?) won’t get these allusions. Is it meta? Or is it ironic? Who cares? It’s just boring.

(Book 5, 2012)

Faithful Place by Tana French

I'm finally admitting defeat. I cannot finish this. I so wanted to, having loved loved loved French's earlier novel The Likeness, which I blogged about here. I stuck with this one way longer than I would have otherwise, but still, I can't make it through.

French is notoriously long-winded. That was a big complaint about The Likeness, and I even referred to it in my own post: "French often uses three sentences when one would do." But while I enjoyed her style in that book, in Faithful Place her excess verbiage did me in. Usually it took the form of maudlin multipage conversations among a dysfunctional family of alcoholics and layabouts who pass their days accusing one another of historic betrayals and acts of violence, or convoluted theories about whodunit put forth by hostile law enforcement officers with competing agendas. Did I mention that this is a mystery? Who actually killed Rose is about 47th on the list of French's interests, it seems, well behind Dublin in the 1980's and the Irish economy, to name just two.

(Book 26, 2011)

A Dead Hand by Paul Theroux

Doesn’t this sound like it’s a mystery novel? Look at the cover: scary! But no, bait and switch. It’s really about a washed up travel writer who becomes obsessed with a mysterious American woman living in Calcutta. On and on he goes about how beautiful she is, how fascinating, how unique. He can’t get enough of her. When she asks him to look into a teeny problem she is having, of course he agrees; how could he not? Sucker.

He does eventually catch on to her nefarious business, but not until long after we have figured it out. Meanwhile, he’s developed a bad case of writer’s block (he has a “dead hand”) and we have to listen to him go on and on about that, too.

The weird thing is that Paul Theroux is himself kind of a crabby old travel writer (though I wouldn’t describe him as “washed up”). What was Theroux trying to accomplish with this book? The mystery is dull and the characters are sketchy. The descriptions of India are good, though. Was Theroux really just writing another travel book with a half-baked mystery plastered on top for marketing purposes?

(Book 49, 2010)

The First Person by Ali Smith

I hate experimental fiction. Yet every now and then I feel the need to try some, just to see if I still hate it—it’s kind of like tasting anchovies every few years, even though you know you really think they are too salty and too fishy. I saw The First Person in the library and I thought “why not?” I haven’t tried any Ali Smith in a long time. It was kind of like the library was the hostess, and she was offering me a bite of anchovy crostini. Because this was a collection of short stories it seemed easier than attempting a whole novel. A bite instead of a whole dish, as it were. An experimental appetizer.

I liked the first bite and the first story. That’s because in retrospect, it’s the only story that makes any sense in the whole book. It’s the only one with a plot, and with characters who have any life. Interestingly, it’s a short story about short stories, and it opens with a conversation between two men discussing which is superior, the novel or the short story. It ends with a wonderful series of observations about the short story by authors like Ernest Hemingway, Eudora Welty, and Alice Munro, all masters of the form. And finally Smith brings her own, equally wonderful observation:

So when is the short story like a nymph?
When the echo of it answers back.

There, I’ve just given away the best line in the whole book. I try not to do that but in this case I couldn’t help it. The rest of the stories are just pointlessly meandering concoctions about nothing, as far as I could tell. Towards the end (I really did finish this book) I couldn’t even tell if I was asleep or awake when I was reading it. Since I’m quoting, I’m going to give you this bit from Fatema Ahmed’s review of The First Person in The Guardian:

Smith's characters lack names, jobs or even personalities, but they do have time for repetitive stretches of dialogue about making tea. After a while they - and their relationships - blur into one another. Most frustratingly, though, they are constantly remarking on their keenness for narrative while failing to provide enough of it.

It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who didn’t like the crostini.

(Book 47, 2009)

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

When I heard that Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout, had won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year I thought “Oh finally, they are giving that award to someone I like.” I hadn’t read the book yet but I was very optimistic. After all, I loved Strout’s two earlier novels, Amy and Isabelle, and Abide with Me.

I should have known better. One of the requirements for winning the Pultizer Prize for fiction is that I must hate the book.* Indeed, the Pulitzer committee calls me every year to make sure that they aren’t giving the prize to something I liked, by accident. (Ha! Just kidding!)

Olive Kitteridge is a series of connected short stories set in New England, where Strout’s previous two books have also taken place. The same characters pop in and out of various stories, including Olive Kitteridge, who is a retired school teacher. Most of the stories are just small episodes in the lives of the townspeople. I suppose they are meant to be poignant snapshots, but I found them to be disjointed and confusing. While the characters in Amy and Isabelle and Abide with Me are clearly drawn and memorable, the characters in Olive Kitteridge seem almost interchangeable with one another: here’s an ineffective man, and here’s another; this woman is disappointed, and so is this other one. I really can’t say enough awful things about this book. On the other hand, Abide with Me was just lovely. Go read that instead.

*Okay, I’m exaggerating. I liked Middlesex (2003), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2001), and Interpreter of Maladies (2000). But I hated (really really hated) The Road (2007) and was pretty bored by several of the other recent winners.

(Book 42, 2009)

ETA more specifics, less ranting.

Love Falls by Esther Freud

Esther Freud wrote Hideous Kinky, a good book that became an even better movie. Love Falls would be a good movie too, but it’s a lousy book. It would be a good movie because it would be set in Italy and have very pretty stars (isn’t that enough?). The protagonist Lara would be played by some nubile young ingénue who would flit around a Tuscan villa in her bikini, having sex with her boyfriend, played by some impossibly virile young male star. The older male lead (Lara’s father) would be played by someone handsome but remote, like Ralph Fiennes, and he would get his sex scenes also, with the 30-something female second lead. This part would happen in Florence, so there would be lots of café scenes and art museums, too.

I had to force myself to finish this book. The only things that propelled me forward were the descriptions of the villa and its gardens, the descriptions of the food, and the descriptions of Florence (more food, lots more art and architecture). I didn’t care one jot about any of the characters or what happened to them. I’m not even sure how it ended.

Plot summary, anyone? Lara, age 17, and her father go to Italy together to visit the father’s friend who is dying. They stay at the friend’s very cool villa near Siena. Lara gets involved with the son of the dissolute aristocratic English family from the very cool villa next door. Her father gets involved with one of their houseguests. The friend dies. They go back to London. Someone, please start filming this immediately.

(Book 27, 2009)

Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn

I had heard that this book was good but that’s not true. It’s a silly book and a waste of time. Set in Victorian London, Silent in the Grave is a weird combination of a Sherlock Holmes story and a romance novel. The Holmesian detective, Nicholas Brisbane, rather than coming across as mysterious, instead seems robotic and off-putting. The female protagonist, Julia, is supposed to be clever and ahead of her time, but she just seems anachronistic. And for someone who is meant to be smart, she is awfully dense. It takes her a long time to figure things out and I think this is a deliberate ploy on the part of the author to s-t-r-e-t-c-h out the action. This book is 506 pages of dithering (Julia) and glowering (Nicholas). Luckily I only read 109 of them.

The Gathering by Anne Enright

I was very disappointed in this. It was disjointed, confusing, depressing, meandering, and unpleasant. It’s filled with suffering and populated by nasty characters. I read about half of it, then skimmed to the end, hoping against hope I would find some redeeming feature, but I did not.

Why did this book win the 2007 Man Booker Prize? I will admit it contains flashes of interesting prose, but for me that hardly counteracts all the weirdness of both subject and style.

(Book 23, 2008)

Disobedience by Jane Hamilton

Oh, I did not like this book. I could hardly bear to finish it, and the only reason I stayed with it was because I was on an airplane and it was this, or Us magazine.

This book is about Henry, a teenage boy who is obsessed with his mother’s extramarital affair and who stalks her and her lover via their e-mail messages which he reads on the sly. What oedipal conclusions should we draw? Especially when we find out that a psychic has revealed that Henry and his mother were once married in an earlier life. Yuck. Henry also has a little sister, Elvira. Are we expected to believe that any parent in the contemporary U.S. would bestow this name on a child? Elvira is obsessed with Civil War re-enactments, and prefers to dress in her recreated uniform, complete with sword. She even attends family weddings in this getup. One review said this book was filled with “gentle humor.” More like grotesque humor. These people are weird, and not the least bit sympathetic.

Worse, Hamilton’s prose just goes on and on. She interrupts herself constantly with incomprehensible digressions. I read many paragraphs after which I would say to myself “okay, what was that about?” and I would be forced to answer “I haven’t the faintest idea.” Jane Hamilton is one of those authors whose popularity and acclaim I don’t understand. I tried to read The Book of Ruth years ago, and hated that also. Is it just me? Is there something I’m missing?

(Book 52, 2007)

My Latest Grievance by Elinor Lipman

Elinor Lipman writes really well about human relationships, especially male/female ones. Many of her books could be called intelligent romance novels because they feature "girl meets boy" scenarios that are quirky, original, and sexy (Isabel's Bed, The Inn at Lake Devine, The Way Men Act). But she also writes well about families: mother-daughter relationships (Then She Found Me), sibling relationships (The Ladies' Man). This book doesn’t fit neatly into any of these categories.

My Latest Grievance unfolds from the point of view of 16-year-old Frederica, a girl who seems (to me) to be inordinately interested in the lives of her parents and the adults around her. Raised on a college campus because her faculty parents are dorm parents, Frederica has a unique window into the lives of the other faculty members and the administration. She uses this window to follow an affair between another dorm parent and the college president, which results in the disintegration of the president's marriage.

Let me count the ways this book didn't work for me:

1. I never heard of a 16-yr-old who cared so much about which middle-aged woman was sleeping with which middle-aged man. Teenagers are self-absorbed, or at most, are absorbed with the relationships within their own circle. Affairs among adults are gross and are best ignored. I just didn't buy Frederica’s fascination with all the shenanigans.

2. Filtering the affair (which could have been interesting) through the eyes of Frederica removed it to a far enough distance from the reader that the impact was deadened. I might have been interested to read the POV of the college president, and why he was so attracted to this other woman that he risked his marriage and career, but we get none of this. We only get Frederica's viewpoint, which is mostly gossip and speculation.

3. Most of the characters were annoying. Frederica's parents are weird. Lipman does a good job of developing them and their off-putting personalities, but I didn't really like reading about them. Frederica herself is a smart-aleck. The “other woman” is dippy. The president is predatory. The abandoned wife is pathetic.

4. Lipman adds a bizarre complication to the plot: the "other woman" used to be married to Frederica's father. This adds to Frederica's fascination with the whole thing. But why? Isn't that just another level of yuckiness?

Blech. What a disappointment. In truth, I'm getting a little worried about MY relationship with Elinor Lipman. I really didn't like her last two offerings before this, either. The Pursuit of Alice Thrift annoyed me because I didn't like Alice Thrift, who was some kind of idiot savant.. The one before that, The Dearly Departed? I can't remember a thing about it, though I know I must have read it. Not a good sign.

Ms. Lipman, please, a good romance. Give us what we want!

(Book 22, 2007)

The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr

I was really looking forward to reading this book, because I so enjoyed Harr's 1995 book A Civil Action. That story, of corporate malfeasance and legal shenanigans, was compelling, and Harr's writing made even arcane points of law and policy accessible and interesting. His characters were flawed, fascinating people, and the book was a great read -- filled with action, conflict, and uncertainty.

Thus I was greatly disappointed by the flat prose, dull characters and lack of dramatic tension in this book. The lost painting to which the title refers is a masterpiece by Caravaggio that was discovered hanging in a Jesuit home in Ireland after more than two hundred years of being missing from the record. I knew this from the book reviews, and also from the news of the discovery when it happened (like A Civil Action, this book is non-fiction). But you have to read 65 pages before Harr even mentions this painting, and even then it's only a passing reference. Instead he spends the beginning of the book introducing us to several characters who seem to have little or no connection to one another, and spends a lot of time following around a young scholar as she researches the provenance of a different Caravaggio painting. How long can you read about someone sitting in different libraries reading different books?

Harr's prose is as uninspired as his plot. When Francesca, the scholar, holds a volume from the 17th century, she "feels like she is touching history." Well duh. We are treated to a several-page description of Francesca's drive out to an old country estate to look for more archives. Do we really care that the air is sweet, and that Francesca is not a very good driver? This is filler, and it really really irritates me. I kept plowing through all this stuff, saying "where is the painting? what painting is missing? who is looking for this painting, and why? why are you bothering me with all this boring stuff, get to the point!" Finally, at page 75, I put the book down in disgust. And there you have it.

This book's grade is D, meaning I didn't hate it as much as I hated Everything is Illuminated, but I still couldn't read it.

Pearl by Mary Gordon

A young woman (Pearl) goes on a hunger strike and chains herself to the flagpole at the American embassy in Dublin. Why? She feels responsible for the accidental death of a teenage boy. Also, she supports the peace accord between the IRA and the British. Do these sound like coherent reasons to kill yourself ? Not to me they don't.

This book was a capital disappointment. The characters are not likable (in fact, they are dislikable). It’s very difficult to feel any sympathy for Pearl’s confused attempt to make a statement when the reasons for it are so stupid and disjointed. Her mother Maria is a spoiled shrew, self-centered and demanding, and her mother’s friend Joseph is a cold fish. Even the minor characters are annoying.

And Mary Gordon, who is usually a beautiful writer, just goes on and on and on. She goes over the same ground again and again, yes, Pearl feels guilty. Guilty guilty guilty. Yes Maria feels angry. Angry angry angry. You get my point.

I read several reviews of this book on line, hoping to find someone who agreed with me. Most reviewers were very favorable, but Natalie Danford, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, also found the narration to be annoying. She compared the book to Unless by Carol Shields, a book I have mentioned in this blog a few times recently, and which I thought of when I was reading Pearl. Unless has a similar theme: a daughter moved to take drastic action in response to an injustice, and a mother's attempt to understand this action. Unless is a far far better book than this one. Read that instead.

(Book 40, 2006)

Triangle by Katharine Weber

This novel is a story inside a story. One story is good; the other is disappointing. Esther Gottesfeld survived the Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1911, though she lost her sister and her fiancé in the flames. She has told her tale many times over the years to journalists, family members, and historians, among others. Several versions of her story are included in the book, in the form of interviews and trial transcripts, and they all contain discrepancies. Why are there discrepancies? Maybe because it happened over 70 years ago, and an old lady forgets. Maybe there is some other reason. Esther's voice and her story are realistic, sympathetic, and compelling. The questions about her experience are raised (for the most part) with subtlety and skill, and are answered equally well.

Framing Esther's experiences is the story of her granddaughter Rebecca, a medical researcher, and Rebecca's partner George, a composer. There is also a third character, a feminist historian who is researching the Triangle fire. Three more annoying, less effective characters would be difficult to find. Long sections of the book describe George's musical compositions, which are based on obscure mathematical formulas that he derives from nature – who wants to read prose descriptions of how music sounds? These parts were screamingly dull, and I skipped most of them. Rebecca is flat and humorless, a loner, and a character who elicits absolutely no sympathy or connection from the reader. And finally, Ruth, the historian, is a ridiculous parody of a feminist, even down to the supposed "Herstory" conference for which she is writing about the Triangle fire. Does this author have some grudge against feminist historians that she feels will be mitigated by creating this grating, unrealistic character? And why is Rebecca so unsympathetic? What purpose is served by her coldness?

I realize that George's music is supposed to evoke inexpressible feelings and serve as some kind of counterpoint to the gritty reality of Esther's experience; I realize that keeping Esther at a distance allows us to better analyze her possible motivations. Clearly these are literary devices that some people respond to positively. I found them distracting and unpleasant, and they interfered with my pure enjoyment of Esther, one tough old lady.

Katharine Weber has an interesting web site with links to several articles about the genesis of this book.

Esther's book: Grade A
Rebecca/George/Ruth's book: Grade D
(Book 32, 2006)

Mortal Love, by Elizabeth Hand

I came across this as I was searching for more magical realism. The blurb implied a lush tale of immortal love among poets, painters, and their muse.

But I didn’t like it, for a lot of different reason. First, it was non-linear, and I’ve complained in this blog before about my problems with non-linear story-telling. The first four chapters each focused on a different character, in a different time period, and a different place, and I got tired of wondering how these characters related to one another, and whether or not they would ever come together. I think this kind of approach can work if there is some amount of information that connects the situations. But to vary the character set, the time frame, and the location was too much. There was in each chapter some information about a mysterious woman, but it wasn’t enough to unite them into a coherent narrative, as far as I was concerned. I didn't like any of the characters or settings enough to stick with it long enought to find out.

And the writing was too flowery! All those adjectives, and so much atmosphere, you could choke on it. And I didn’t LIKE the characters. They were whiney and annoying, and despite their superficial differences, really all the same. But the cover was pretty. There, I’ve said something good.

Here is an interesting review that makes the book sound more linear than it is, but which also does a nice job of identifying the problems. (Notice this reviewer also assigns letter grades.)

Star Lake Saloon and Housekeeping Cottages by Sara Rath

Some readers forgive bad prose if the plot is compelling. Not me. I forgive problematic plots if the writing is good enough. I said as much in yesterday’s post about the title short story in Ursula LeGuin’s Unlocking the Air; I failed to understand the point of this story, set in some unnamed Eastern European capital on the verge of revolution, where in the end, instead of storming the palace, the demonstrators stand around and jingle their keys. I didn’t care that I didn’t understand it. The writing was so beautiful, so evocative, that my lack of comprehension didn’t spoil it for me.

Perhaps readers on the other side of the fence are the ones who liked Star Lake Saloon and Housekeeping Cottages. This got good reviews, and the plot sounds pretty good: city-dwelling woman inherits Northwoods resort and learns to love it. Yet I couldn’t get more than ten pages into it without tossing it aside in disgust. It violates several of the rules for good fiction writing*, including:

1. Never start the book with a discussion of the protagonist’s name (page 3).

2. Avoid using dialogue to provide back story (page 5).

3. Show, don’t tell (page 4).

4. Avoid physical descriptions of characters, especially by means of having someone look in a mirror and think about her appearance (page 6).

*Some of these rules come from Elmore Leonard’s Ten Rules of Writing but some are my own personal biases. My favorite one of his is "Leave out the parts that readers tend to skip."

This book's grade is D. I only read 10 pages, so I can't count it in my running total.

Waiting by Ha Jin

This was a really awful book. I don't know why I stuck with it as long as I did. I finally abandoned it in disgust about 7/8ths of the way through, and skimmed the last bit. I kept thinking that it had to get better (after all--it won all those awards!), but it never did. It's written in a flat, declarative style, with stilted, unnatural dialogue. For most of the book nothing really happens (though I guess that's part of the idea of the title). Things were starting to happen at the point where I quit, but by that time I was sick of waiting. Sick of Waiting.

More information is available here.
(Book 1, 2006)