January 2007 book Reviews
In the past year I have read more then I have since I was a kid. I have overcome my phobia of libraries (I really did have a phobia), and now regularly go to the library to find myself 3-4 books per month and once I finish them I pick up another batch. In the last 2 weeks I have read three novels and today I will reviewing two of them (a review of my third novel will be coming shortly).
Often I go to the library on a mission, a specific writer I want to read for the first time, like Anais Nin or Zadie Smith, but ironically the two novels I am reviewing today I randomly picked up as I browsed the shelves. Why I say ironically is because these two novels are both some of the most self-absorbed tedious pieces of work I have read in a long time.
PARADISE PARK by Allegra Goodman (368 pages)
Allegra Goodman has the wonderful distinction of being a writer who is recognized and celebrated for her short stories that have appeared in NEW YORKER magazine. I thought it was weird when I came across her bright yellow book in the library and read the back discussing her renowned stories in the NEW YORKER, because I have recently started reading the NY magazine weekly, and was immediately curious about what makes her such an incredible writer. So I picked up Goodman's first two novels, Kaaterskill Falls (which I will be reviewing in a few weeks) and Paradise Park which I decided to read first because it look light and fun.
The inside sleeve of Paridise Park calls the main character Sharon Spiegelman, "one of the most endearing, exasperating, and indomitable heroines in modern literature," its a fairly accurate description of Sharon but they forget to include the phrase, "self-absorbed annoying and close to pointless characters that has ever existed", in that glowing little description.
The tone of the entire novel is like reading your roommates journals, they're not necessarily interesting but yet you can't put them down because you assume that because they have written so much that that must mean the action is coming soon. Unfortunately it never comes.
Here is an example of the tone that runs throughout the novel:
Well, the next few weeks were bleak, because I didn't actually know anybody, and here I was across the street from the university, and the summer session was starting, but, of course, I wasn't registered. And it wasn't like being unregistered at BU, where I knew people on campus and could walk around looking disaffected and too cool for everyone else. Here, I'd never been a part of the scene to begin with, so there wasn't anything to be disaffected from, which, if you think about it, is the whole point of being cool, the whole raison d'etre (page 21).
You experience Sharon living through 20 years of life, from being deserted in Hawaii by her older dancer boyfriend in the 70's, to reconnecting with her Jewish culture and faith. It sounds like it would be inspiring, doesn't it? Well it wasn't. This character was maybe too real. Or maybe that was the point to create a character and a life that has major turns that lead nowhere, daily living that does not inspire, relationships that dissolve leaving you pretty much unchanged. It's not glamorous but that's life sometimes. I just found this character one of the most unlikable characters I've ever read, and not because she was evil, or manipulative or mean, she was simply so self-absorbed, defiant and boring all at once that I found reading the book entertaining in its tediousness.
Maybe I will see what the critics see in Goodman once I read her first novel Kaaterskill Falls. Maybe its like when I read Zadie Smith's second novel On Beauty, and couldn't understand what people saw in her work until I then read her first novel White Teeth and became a huge fan. We'll see...
THE INTERRUPTION OF EVERYTHING by Terry McMillan (365 pages)
Then I read The Interruption of Everything and was surprised that yet again I found myself reading another novel from the Self-absorbed fictional-journal genre.
McMillan's latest book revolved around Marilyn Grimes, a 44 year old mother of three, married twenty years to boring man whose suddenly going through a very evident middle life crisis. Marilyn feels like she needs a change, she's been taking care of everyone's needs for years and feels like she's forgotten her dreams in the process. I originally read a excerpt from this book in Essence magazine and thought wow this sounds great. I've never been a fan of McMillan's work, and I once tried to read Waiting Exhale, when I was in high school but couldn't make it past the first chapter. Now I see why.
McMillan has a knack for dialogue but she seem to get caught up in writing witty sarcastic lines rather then developing an inner world for Marilyn. There were paragraphs so long-winded in this book that it felt over indulgent and pointless. Some of the lines that come out of this characters mouth is so over dramatic and cheesy I had to shake my head.
I'll put it this way. I'll be fifty before I know it and then sixty and hopefully seventy. I watch elderly people and some of them are weary ans some of them seem to have a look on their faces that says: "I've lived. I've been through a lot. But I not only made it, I've come out ahead. It took some doing, but I did it. I paid attention to my heart and my brain once I stopped confusing the two. I finally got it right and there I am sitting on this park bench reading a good book, which I occasionally put down simply to watch all these young fools live as if life is some endless roller coaster when in fact its a waltz" (pg. 23).
This little speech is something she is saying to her girlfriends during one of their designated "Pity parties". It just rang so disingenuous and cheesy that I couldn't believe that a seasoned writer like McMillan kept it in. Ultimately the book revolves around a doormat with a sarcastic mouth. There are times in the novel where her husband is being so flagrantly disrespectful and selfish that I want the character to quit with the sarcastic remarks, and bitching to her friends, and actually put her foot down in a concrete way. At one point she kicks him out only for him to return hours later and she's to apathetic to do something about it. The book is literally just an unhappy housewife complaining, running around wondering "who am I", and then it ends and you wonder why McMillan couldn't have downsized some of the less important story-lines in the novel and actually spend time developing the evolution of this woman more significantly in all those 365 pages. Though she threw in some changes in the characters life I guess to show that she changes, the changes seem superficial because it is the inside of her that I wanted to see changed. In the end I read the book in a day just to get it over with.
Both books made me miss amazing novels like White Teeth, a novel that took me into another world and left me a little changed for the better after reading it.
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