Review: Desperate Characters by Paula Fox

Desperate Characters by Paula Fox
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A small, amazing novel about a married couple living in a slowly gentrifying Brooklyn circa 1970, as they deal with a number of small (yet crucial) crises over the span of just a few days.

Like another favorite small novel of mine -- Ian McEwan's "On Chesil Beach" -- this is a tightly constructed, careful study which is impossibly rich and perfectly textured. The Bentwoods' marriage and their unsettling experiences over a few days hits on pretty much everything: race, class, gender, society, money, work, ethics...you name it. Like a small painting of a VAST landscape. I don't really read much poetry, but it has a rate of amazing images, phrases, and observations that I can only imagine is replicated in a quality poem. It's gorgeous, silky writing from beginning to end.

All the '70s period details basically make this a historical novel at this point, yet ALL the themes and preoccupations and tensions and fears still resonate perfectly. They might even resonate more than ever, as they make us look around and realize that the more things change...

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Review: Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The story of a girl with a "difficult" home life (to say the least) and her burgeoning relationship with a indie-music loving boy, set in Omaha in 1986, Eleanor & Park is a good, quick read. Much sadder and darker than I expected, given it's "young adult" pedigree, I felt it was surprisingly sophisticated in language and tone. The only thing "young" about it was the plot that felt somewhat plodding and simplistic, like I was a step ahead of the narrative most of the time as it moved from A to B to C as expected. That said, I was on board with the characters throughout, and compelled to get to the ending. The world and situations felt real and heart-wrenching and the characters authentic. With one notable (and unfortunate) exception there aren't clear-cut "good guys" or "bad guys," etc -- everyone (with that one ugly exception) is nuanced and human and the emotional core of the story rings authentic. This novel didn't change my perception of young love or high school struggles or open new windows to the human heart, but I nevertheless enjoyed reading from start to stop.

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Review: Night Film by Marisha Pessl

Night Film by Marisha Pessl
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I did not enjoy this book at all, yet was somehow intrigued enough to plow through sll 575+ pages. What I loved was the "hook" -- that there exists a reclusive, shadowy film director (shades of David Lynch, Werner Herzog, Stanley Kubrick) who may or may not be a psycho/occultist/sadist/child-murderer but is definitely a visionary whose films people love and obsess over. All of which plays on the nagging notion that I think is common for anyone who can willingly suspend their disbelief when watching a film: "What if it's REAL?"

So, great hook. Cool idea. Terrible book. It was a noir with no snap either in the jokes (I should really say "jokes") or in the dialogue. A thriller with no propulsion or pace. A mystery with no good twists and with a totally insufficient payoff.

All the walk-on characters spoke in hilariously inhuman speeches, pages and pages of speechifying, sometimes with the addition of gross, leaden attempts at "dialect." (I'm assuming that's what the words like talkin' and grabbin' were meant to indicate.) I further assume that all these walk-on characters are meant to be plum roles for the inevitable movie adaptation, but less than 10% of the words in this endlessly wordy book will make it to the screen, so Oscar-hungry supporting actors of the world beware.

All the main characters had their emotions tediously described, and their thoughts explicitly stated, despite the first-person narration. Plot points were regularly recapitulated, like we couldn't be expected to remember the event that took place 100 pages ago. ("I thought about the story that lady had told me about the car with the bleeding man in the backseat who disappeared and realized that this new rambling speech totally corroborated that story!) And on a nitpicky, stylistic level, the consistently italicized words meant to indicate emphasis and importance (I guess?) made me feel like I was reading a book by a high school junior who was petrified we wouldn't understand properly. The whole thing felt like the work of someone who didn't have any faith in readers and was therefore determined to sledgehammer everything to death.

I felt a strong instinct to abandon this book after 100 pages, and then had the same feeling even more strongly after 200 pages. Yet I was snagged by that wonderful hook and had to make it through to the end. Boy, am I sorry I did. Lesson learned; like they say about the SATs: always trust your instincts.

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Not a Review, Just A Confirmation: Beloved by Toni Morrison

Beloved by Toni Morrison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's probably beyond ridiculous to "review" Beloved, but it's worth noting that this was an actually amazing book, not just a book that's supposed to be amazing. Throughout, I checked in with myself to make sure I was really enraptured by the book and not just blindly following the critical consensus. In the end, I'm certain that this is one of the best, most unsettling, most beautiful, saddest books I've ever read. I don't know why I've long been worried that it would be too difficult or too unpleasant to read; on the contrary, it was enormously enjoyable to read (although challenging) from beginning to end. Overall, I can't recommend it highly enough. Which...obviously comes as no surprise.

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Review: What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller

What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal] by Zoë Heller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a dessert-book: delicious, scarfed down too quickly, followed by regret, then an immediate desire for more. It's much more than a confection, but it's just as enjoyable. It's actually a thoughtful, scathing, hilarious, terrifying, intimate character study of two very different women who teach at an English high school, and the relationship that develops between them. A relationship that deepens and intensifies when one of them is caught up in (the titular) scandal.

I'm NOT a big fan of any kind of torture: torture-porn (like the "Saw" movies), torture-comedy (Meet the Parents is the best example I can think of) or actual torture (The Passion of the Christ). This book teeters on the edge of becoming so calamitous as to be torturous, but never falls over that dark ledge. Instead, we are treated to a totally controlled, insane portrait that feels like it shrinks and shrinks until it's like a hit in a movie when a mobster puts plastic over the mark's face and suffocates them. The absolutely perfect tone -- prim, priggish, placid -- belies the wild (psycho) ride being described. Imagine "Gone Girl" being narrated by Mary Poppins.

There's also a lot of phenomenal stuff in here about power and manipulation and sexual double standards and stereotypes and class and love. But really it's such a total pleasure to read from beginning to end that I think any thematic or intellectual takeaways are mere icing on the cake. Having just written a little about the lack of female agency in many of the books I've read recently, the addition of this book definitely alters that particular mix. But aside from my own private lens, the narrative -- tone, voice, mood, etc -- of Heller's writing is pure pleasure.

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