Reviews from Bookshelf adult-fiction

I tried to listen to this, but I couldn't get past the clutter in the narrative. I just didn't identify with the mother, and a tone of barely suppressed outrage can only be put up with for so long. Keri (the mother) never became human to me; it was as though I was supposed to be impressed by her awesome struggle and caring efforts on every page.

That got old fast.

Still, mothers who have struggled to get psychiatric services for adult children might relate to this story.

This historical novel is about the theory of maternal impression and one scientist willing to do anything to achieve greatness. There is real evil here, but we experience the narrator's attempts to resist it and celebrate when she achieves any measure of autonomy from male control.

I listened to this on audio book a couple of years ago, but it is still vividly present to me. I liked the dark twists in the plot, and I'm a sucker for a conspiracy plot. Readers who like this book might also like The Nature of Monsters by Clare Clark.

I loved the varied characters in this book. Some reviewers have objected to the fact that much of the book is told as "backstory," but I would describe Fowler's technique differently. She's using the book club in two ways: (1) as a space in which real, present moment interactions take place and propel the plot forward, and (2) as a backdrop for the characters' memories so that we see each as the hero of his/her own story as it plays out. For example, I would never have found myself wanting the best for priggish Prudie if I didn't know of the horrible mind games her mother subjected her to as a child.

The movie based on this book is quite different, but fun and charming in its own right.

FYI: I listened to this as an audiobook.

I adored _Snow Falling on Cedars_ (listened to on audiobook), but found this book to be so subdued that, were it not for a long airport delay, I might not have finished it. That's not to say that it's a bad book--it is beautifully written. But I'm not sure that it works as a novel. It brings to mind the contemplative qualities of writing by Annie Dillard or, even more aptly, W.G. Sebald. Like Sebald's _The Rings of Saturn_ or _Austerlitz_, the book's story has far less to do with actual happenings (in _The Other_ the bulk of the event occur in the past) than the subtly shifting currents of the speaker's inner life. Ambivalence reigns in the novel--the speaker's ambivalence about "the other" (his disturbed friend John William) and his retreat into the woods of the Northwest, about the ethical slippages in his own decisions, about the massive sum of money he inherits, about the daily compromises required to live in a flawed world.

This book is packed with great characters who are vividly drawn without becoming stereotypes, which is especially impressive given that about 3/4 of the book is set in the South, which is so frequently the victim of stereotype.

There's a murder mystery, love in many forms, and a convincing and unique narrative voice that rings true with the exception of a few overdramatic moments. I was also impressed that a book largely occupied (at least on a surface level) with murder and sex had a remarkably strong moral sensibility. The protagonist, Arlene, was raised Baptist, but her faith is more than just childhood baggage, it's something that lives in her and affects what she does. Yet GODS IN ALABAMA is by no means "inspirational," nor does it resort to tired tropes.

In summary: The characters are real and have heart, the plot is convincing, and the dialogue/narration is well-written (or at least it sounds good in audio). That's enough to make me like most any book, and the fact that there's a moral undercurrent that doesn't hit me over the head, but that I can really relate to... well, that makes it even better.

Okay, so it's a book about a (fictional) Olympic gold medalist in swimming. Hmmm. Snooze. Sports bio? Blech. But not so fast... the thing that some crankypants on goodreads don't like--that the book is not really all "about" swimming--is what I like about it best. Swimming forms an exquisite backdrop for what is really the story of being Philomena, seeing the world as she sees it. There are healthy doses of family drama here. I'd recommend it for anyone who liked Jenny Downham's Before I Die or for people (like me) who can listen to the sad Sulfjan Stevens cancer song ("Casimir Pulaski Day") over and over for a good cry.

I could cite the Kirkus·review's final line to sum up my overall reaction: "Flags a little at the finish line, but nonetheless well worth plunging into." But when you put it like that... well, it makes it sound like a book a lot less worth reading than it really is. So I'll go with the final line of the Publishers Weekly review, which is what convinced me to check out the book in the first place: "It's worth reading for the prose alone."

It's true that the novel doesn't really end, it sort of just sputters to a stop. Okay, that's not awesome. I wish Keegan and her editor had worked it over one more time to find the right final note, the right final movement.

BUT let's remember how hard endings are and focus on all the (many!) things this book gets right. I mean, the speaker Philomena is brutally honest and funny in a way I only dream of.

I've never read anything produced by the OULIPO crew that was so profoundly human--concerned with what it means to be human and the hard work of living that is nevertheless very beautiful. It's interesting to me that a tone that is by and large quite distant--a museum curator's tone, perhaps?--emerges over the course of the novel as affectionate and deeply invested. I'm still trying to unravel for myself the mystery of how Perec gets me to want to read with care so many catalogs of apartment contents and painstaking descriptions of paintings and photographs hanging on walls.

I love the Valéne passages, especially the one in which he imagines a whole subterranean world beneath the building. Maybe that passage provides a kind of clue to my earlier question, for even the dazed Cyclopses toiling among grubs in the deepest depths are protected (their one eye shielded by blue glass), humanized, made lovable in their efforts. I think back to this passage as what softens the pain of seeing a blind Bartlebooth holding that W-shaped puzzle piece over the X-shaped space in the puzzle. Bartlebooth and Valéne are lovable in spite--or because--of their failures to accomplish their grand tasks.

Although less a "literary thriller" and more a semi-existential contemplation of what it means to witness and live in a barbarously flawed world. Art history, documentary (war) photography, and the conflict in the Balkans also figure largely in Faulques's solitary reflections and his conversations with a man whose life was destroyed by one of Faulques's photographs.