Some books that I read draw me in so thoroughly that the struggles, hopes, fears, and tragedies of the characters become my own. I feel linked to those characters, emotionally invested in them, and I continue to read in the hopes that they will resolve their problems in the end. Then, there are other books that, during the process of reading them, make me want to reach into the pages and shake some sense into the characters. I become impatient with the blindness of those characters, irritated with their inability to see what is right before them. The Swimming Pool belongs to that latter group.
The writing of The Swimming Pool was very deep, and I often felt that the author was really walking a fine line, but I also felt that, ultimately, she crossed it. I could certainly identify with why the characters felt as they did, but their emotions sometimes just struck me as over the top. To be fair, as a reader, we are very much inside the heads of these characters, and it's fair to say that if we could actually be inside the head of another human being--say, our neighbor--we might find that what's in there is shockingly more dramatic than what is on the outside. Still, while I think the psychology described was conceivable, I couldn't suspend my disbelief, particularly when it came to the character of Callie. It is so obvious that she is just not right, and yet her brother and husband don't do anything about it. While I can understand wanting to bury your head in the sand when faced with something unpleasant, I found myself becoming really angry with Jed and with Billy for their inertia.
Which leads me to the real problem I had with this book: I just didn't connect with any of the characters. There was no point where I felt like I was really seeing things through their eyes. Instead, I felt like an observer. I couldn't really sympathize with any of the characters, and so their behavior was just frustrating. I'm not sure any of the characters were meant to be entirely sympathetic, but they pretty much all felt just very self-indulgent to me. This was so true that when a big secret is revealed, I was utterly unsurprised by it. And, yet, I didn't actively dislike the characters either, really. This is where the book really failed for me. By leaving me unable to engage with the characters, either by liking them or disliking them, I was ultimately indifferent to the novel as a whole.
The plot was also, to me, quite contrived. It felt like each event that happened was created specifically to enhance the drama even more. I would have found it a lot more interesting had more of the events struck me as coincidental. Instead, it felt to me as if the novel was written in such a way that its outcome was preordained and everything that happened before it was a building block in that construction. While I certainly think that most authors have a conclusion in mind when they write, it is necessary for me, as a reader, to feel like the plot grows organically and for it to take me in unexpected directions. That didn't happen for me with this book because everything felt rather formulaic. LeCraw does write well, but her writing is overshadowed by the shortcomings of this novel.
Showing posts with label literary fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literary fiction. Show all posts
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Every Last One by Anna Quindlen
"Every Last One" is the first Anna Quindlen novel I've read, and I can see why her novels have such wide appeal. I found Quindlen's writing so evocative and rich that it was as if I was experiencing Mary Beth's emotions as my own. This is a very deeply felt, genuine novel, the kind that you find yourself thinking about even after you've put it down.
This is something of a two-part novel. Quindlen devotes the first half to describing the everyday life of Mary Beth Latham, a wife and mother of three. Mary Beth is the kind of character with whom I think a lot of mothers can identify. Though she owns her own business and has an active social life, Mary Beth seems to struggle with defining herself outside of her role as a wife and mother. Her seemingly perfect life has left Mary Beth feeling restless, as if she is looking for something--but even she doesn't know exactly for what she is looking. As a result, she doesn't always acknowledge what she has before her, not until it is too late.
She's an imperfect character. There are times when I found myself questioning her actions, when I was pretty disgusted with the parenting decisions she made. I felt that this was deliberate on the part of the author. As Mary Beth herself reflects in the novel, it's easy to sit back and judge the parenting skills of others. Yet, how many parents really have a grasp of the reality of their children's situations--and how many would prefer to not really know? Mary Beth is a character who is blinded by her desire to create a perfect life for her children, a desire that leads her to gloss over things and to be content with what seems to lay on the surface. She is aware that there are deeper problems, but she is also convinced that they will all work out all right in the end, that the world she has created is the world that actually exists.
It is only when a horrifying tragedy strikes her family that it becomes clear just how much of what's been going on Mary Beth has overlooked. Preoccupied with worries about her son Max and his depression, she fails to recognize the disaster looming on the horizon. There were aspects of this disaster that were surprising to me, but it wasn't entirely unexpected. Is Mary Beth really so blind, or is it that the clues that Quindlen drops are a little too heavy? Mary Beth does acknowledge later in the novel that she didn't really want to see what was before her. Though I really liked the novel and felt that it was well-written, this was the one part that didn't sit entirely well with me. Perhaps it is easier as a reader to see some of the clear signals that Mary Beth missed, but I found it a little difficult to understand her failure to act.
However, I did find the depiction of Mary Beth's grief to be very realistic. In fact, her grief is a little characteristic of how her life has been up to that point. She has put on a facade, and it leads to her becoming rather alienated from others. The question I found most interesting at this point was one that Mary Ellen explores at length: How can things return to normal? There is no such thing as normal for her anymore. People speak of moving on after a tragedy, but is it really ever possible to do so? Mary Beth's experiences alter her fundamentally, as they would anyone. Just as the book is almost like two separate installments, Mary Beth herself is like two different people: the woman who existed before the tragedy and the women who is left afterward.
This is something of a two-part novel. Quindlen devotes the first half to describing the everyday life of Mary Beth Latham, a wife and mother of three. Mary Beth is the kind of character with whom I think a lot of mothers can identify. Though she owns her own business and has an active social life, Mary Beth seems to struggle with defining herself outside of her role as a wife and mother. Her seemingly perfect life has left Mary Beth feeling restless, as if she is looking for something--but even she doesn't know exactly for what she is looking. As a result, she doesn't always acknowledge what she has before her, not until it is too late.
She's an imperfect character. There are times when I found myself questioning her actions, when I was pretty disgusted with the parenting decisions she made. I felt that this was deliberate on the part of the author. As Mary Beth herself reflects in the novel, it's easy to sit back and judge the parenting skills of others. Yet, how many parents really have a grasp of the reality of their children's situations--and how many would prefer to not really know? Mary Beth is a character who is blinded by her desire to create a perfect life for her children, a desire that leads her to gloss over things and to be content with what seems to lay on the surface. She is aware that there are deeper problems, but she is also convinced that they will all work out all right in the end, that the world she has created is the world that actually exists.
It is only when a horrifying tragedy strikes her family that it becomes clear just how much of what's been going on Mary Beth has overlooked. Preoccupied with worries about her son Max and his depression, she fails to recognize the disaster looming on the horizon. There were aspects of this disaster that were surprising to me, but it wasn't entirely unexpected. Is Mary Beth really so blind, or is it that the clues that Quindlen drops are a little too heavy? Mary Beth does acknowledge later in the novel that she didn't really want to see what was before her. Though I really liked the novel and felt that it was well-written, this was the one part that didn't sit entirely well with me. Perhaps it is easier as a reader to see some of the clear signals that Mary Beth missed, but I found it a little difficult to understand her failure to act.
However, I did find the depiction of Mary Beth's grief to be very realistic. In fact, her grief is a little characteristic of how her life has been up to that point. She has put on a facade, and it leads to her becoming rather alienated from others. The question I found most interesting at this point was one that Mary Ellen explores at length: How can things return to normal? There is no such thing as normal for her anymore. People speak of moving on after a tragedy, but is it really ever possible to do so? Mary Beth's experiences alter her fundamentally, as they would anyone. Just as the book is almost like two separate installments, Mary Beth herself is like two different people: the woman who existed before the tragedy and the women who is left afterward.
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