Summer slump
Apologies my book reviews have been so few and far between over the past couple of weeks. The truth is-I’ve been in a bit of a slump.
After bingeing on YA novels, in early July I decided to give my mind a breather from dystopian worlds and star-crossed romances and just stick to fiction and lit, the classics even. But maybe I just wasn’t in the mood or I didn’t pick the right book at the right time (the more I read, the more I think that plays a bigger role in the books we like and dislike), but I struggled with connecting with the vast majority of them.
I started with On Beauty by Zadie Smith. I read and loved White Teeth years ago, so I was eager to finally see the next phase of her writing career. For me, what stuck out the most was the characterization: Despite a potentially sprawling cast of characters, each character felt so distinct and vibrant, so that when they inevitably crossed paths in such a small college town, each meeting became a charged encounter. One small yet memorable moment from the book is early on when the Belsey’s Haitian maid enters the home, interrupting the family breakfast. Kiki Belsey, who is a black woman from Florida who also married a British man, feels highly uncomfortable giving her instructions: “Kiki stayed in her strange moment, nervous of what this black woman thought of another black woman paying her to clean” (11). These two women barely exchange a word, but in a sentence Smith unpacks at how fraught their relationship is: tenuously connected because of their race, but even more divided because of their different class standings. The book is full of such encounters that force each character to confront the categories (race, class, gender, etc) they formerly defined themselves by without question.
However, where On Beauty tended to lose me was its storyline. To me it was too choppy and inconsistent: Some parts flowed furiously (the anniversary dinner party!) but others were bogged down by too much inner monologue or exposition. Such lull moments made it difficult to continue reading and really get a sense of the book as one continuous whole.
Hoping for a lighter read, I picked up The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion from my pile of BEA galleys. This book got a huge marketing push at BEA: There was a surplus of galleys, plus a huge banner greeted attendees in the entrance hall. To further pique my interest, the blurb had the makings of a funny rom com: After years of solitary living and disastrous blind dates, genetics professor Don Tillman decides to take his romantic life into his own hands by devising the Wife Project, a seemingly fool-proof test to screen his potential mates to find the One. Instead, fate throws in his path Rosie, a drinking, smoking, come-as-you-please woman who enlists Don to help in her search for her biological father.
While the cards were certainly there for an entertaining read, I just found Don so dull and robotic as a character that it was difficult to be completely invested in his journey. Although he is never formally identified as an “Aspie” (ie one with Asberger’s Syndrome), his personality and mannerisms certainly make him a borderline case: He has a routine for every minute, every hour of the day and social interactions make him extremely nervous and awkward. For me, the trouble is not that he’s this way; it’s that the writing has rendered him so emotionless that it was hard to really sympathize what Don was going through. And this passionless voice also affects how other characters are perceived: It’s like there’s a thick glass surrounding them, muffling who they really are, especially Rosie. I couldn’t help but compare this with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which did this type of narrative much better.
Finally, the last book in July that I tackled was the infamous Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov for my neglected Classics Challenge. Even though I knew the basic storyline going into the book (as well as all the controversy about it), I was actually unprepared for my own visceral loathing of Humbert Humbert. Although his narrative begs us, the audience, to understand his obsession with Lolita from his (admitted twisted) point of view, I could not abide by his actions. I know I am breaking some cardinal rule of literary critique by bringing in my own beliefs, but I really couldn’t stand Humbert’s explanations for himself because I couldn’t stand what he did to Lolita. It was honestly hard for me to view this book on an artistic level, because doing so seems to overlook the fact that a man of much older years took advantage of such a vulnerable girl. Maybe Nabokov’s point is ultimately that Humbert wasn’t in control, since Lolita turned the tables on him in the end, but there were so many disturbing moments when Humbert physically silenced Lolita that it was difficult to read further. I did force myself to finish it, but I for one could not tell you what all the acclaim for Lolita is about.