It's sad when you get excited about a favored author's new book and then you really don't enjoy the book. Topping off the the two books that fit that description were two that I honestly did not understand at any meaningful level (and they made it onto multiple "best of 2022" lists). Yeah, that makes you feel stupid. So here they are.
Fiction
As someone who never really cared for Dickens, I guess I should have realized I wasn't going to love Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead as soon as I learned it was David Copperfield reimagined in contemporary Appalachia. The inspiration is clear--Damon Fields, whose nickname is Demon Copperhead, is being raised by a young, single drug-addicted mother in rural Virginia. When she dies of an overdose, he enters the foster care system at age 11. At his first placement, where the children are unpaid workers for a tobacco farmer, he meets his own Fagin, the charming and immoral older boy known as Fast Forward. Damon has another bad foster placement, which he escapes by running off to find his grandmother, who cannot or will not let him stay. However, Damon is not without skills, both artistic and athletic, and goes to live with the local football coach. When he is injured in a game and does not have the treatment he needs, he becomes addicted to opioids and enters a downward spiral. There's a somewhat surprising ending on the happy end of the spectrum for a book about a young drug addict, but it does not redeem the story for me. This summary skips over other bad experiences--the book is entirely depressing, perhaps particularly because there were so many instances in which adults could have made a difference in this young man's life. I recognize that Kingsolver is dealing with a very real problem or constellation of problems, but I didn't feel like she took me anywhere that I hadn't already been through news stories and Empire of Pain.
My second disappointment of the month was Horse, by Geraldine Brooks, who has written some fabulous novels (March, The Year of Wonder, People of the Book). I wasn't too enthusiastic about reading the book (two book clubs I'm in chose it as a selection) because I'm not that interested in horses, but I finally jumped in. The book is well constructed, intercutting three (at least three) stories. The first is the story of the enslaved trainer Jarret Lewis who had a special connection with the great race horse Lexington (a real horse in the 1850s); it was interesting to learn about the important role of enslaved people in horse-racing, which was an immensely popular entertainment in the years leading up to the Civil War, although I always cringe when a white author writes their take on African American dialect (and I remained mostly uninterested in the details of horse racing). The second story is that of the artist Thomas Scott, an artist who specialized in horse paintings, which were evidently very popular in the era (although another topic I'm not that interested in--perhaps I am just very close-minded). Scott is also a real person, to whom Brooks gave a male lover, something she admits in the endnotes is not based on historical fact; I found this an annoying attempt to give the story some modernity. But the worst example of that comes in the third story, set in 2019 and involving two young scholars: Jess works at the Smithsonian and is reconstructing Lexington's skeleton that had languished in a storeroom for decades and Theo is an art history graduate student trying to find out more about a Scott painting of Lexington he found in his neighbor's trash. I was interested in the give and take in the relationship between Jess (a white woman) and Theo (a black man), which highlighted the truth that black people must think about race all the time while white people have the luxury of not thinking about it. SPOILER: However, when Brooks has Theo killed by cops, I about lost it. It was a totally gratuitous plot twist that was inadequately dealt with, leading me to conclude it too was added just to add currency to the story and was disrespectful to the people who have experienced this type of violence. Not everyone will agree with me on this (although my sister does!), but this event took me from being neutral about the book to being rather negative.
On to the books that made me feel stupid. First was The Furrows by Namwali Serpell. The book started out as the story of a woman whose brother died when they were children; as she grows up, he dies over and over at different phases of her life. I wasn't sure whether that was supposed to be an exploration of different futures in the metaverse or an indication that she was deranged by grief and guilt. Then abruptly, in the second part of the book, it became a story about a man who was trying to somehow scam her family by pretending to find her brother or be her brother or I don't know what. Honestly, I just have no idea what was happening or what the reader was supposed to take away from the book. I was happy to see that the NYT reviewer wasn't crazy about the book. She didn't feel stupid after reading it (as I did), but she did say "The book is so laden with odd convergences and there are so many brushes with demons that it does leave you feeling tiny and weird."
The second stupid-making book was The Passenger, by Cormac McCarthy. The book focuses on two characters, a brilliant brother and sister who were in love with each other. The sister Alice's sections are conversations between her and a set of imaginary beings that more or less harangue her (mostly a character referred to as The Thalidomide Kid--use your imagination). The sister committed suicide ten years before the parts of the book narrated by the brother, which also are primarily presented in dialogue. The brother is a salvage diver who finds a plane that there appears to be some mystery about--what the mystery is or how it relates to the federal agents that start following Billy is unclear. While not much really happens, Billy's conversations are wide-ranging, covering such topics as physics (Billy and Alice's father was involved in developing the atomic bomb), the Kennedy assassination, the existence of God and the possibility of an afterlife, and much more. Again, I have no idea what the point is or if there even is a point. However, McCarthy writes so beautifully I still might read the novel that he wrote as a pair with this one, which evidently focuses on Alice's treatment for schizophrenia.
Mysteries/Thrillers
I've mentioned numerous times before that I read too many bad mysteries, but I've decided that the serve some sort of mental health-preserving function so I'll undoubtedly keep reading them. None that I've read so far this month were worth saying much about (listed below),, but I have a rant or two:
- Mystery writers should think twice before inserting a twist that has no real function in the story. To me, the purpose of a good twist is to make the reader rethink how the story is different now that they have this new information. There's one at the end of Blood Will Tell that really is just the author trying to surprise the reader for no reason. I felt the same way when, several books in the series ago, Louise Penny revealed that Jean-Guy's daughter has Down's Syndrome. Of course, twists that you can tell the author thinks are major but in fact were predictable are also rather pointless (see The Perfect Marriage).
- Some mystery authors do actually use the language very effectively. But others are just trying too darn hard. Example from The Murder of Sara Barton: "Her celebrity hangs over the courtroom like the carcass of a dead animal." WHAT? Just stop it. Mystery readers are generally looking for plot and character not the most beautiful language (for that we go to Cormac McCarthy).
- Some genre writers--especially those doing police procedurals or legal thrillers--need to try a LOT harder when it comes to getting legal matters right. In A Killer's Wife, for example, a prosecutor handles the case of her former boyfriend who allegedly killed using the same MO as that prosecutor's ex-husband. (Yes, you read that right.) No, that would not happen.
- Blood Will Tell, by Heather Chavez
- The Perfect Marriage, by Jeneva Rose
- The Murder of Sara Barton, by Lance McMillian
- A Killer's Wife, by Victor Methos
- Black Echo, by Michael Connolly (first Bosch book; audio book has an interesting interview with the author and Titus Welliver who narrates and portrays Bosch in the series)
- Anywhere You Run, by Wanda K. Morris (not sure this belongs in this category but that's how it's marketed--mostly it is just so sad)
- Black Heart, by Anna-Lou Weatherly
No comments:
Post a Comment