Reading, reading
I stayed up late last night to finish The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. In some ways it was the most gripping book I've read in a while, but in other ways it was a disappointment.
I loved Drown, Díaz 's debut story collection, and I wanted to love this book too, but I just couldn't. There were moments that were absolutely engrossing, there was a Rushdiean entanglement of political history with the supernatural, there was lots of Díaz 's energetic prose, there was the lovely shock of recognition when we finally learn that the mysterious narrator is Yunior ("Yunior! I haven't read about you since 1996! Welcome back, buddy!"), there were moments when I could feel the disparate threads of the narrative beginning to form a whole....
But those threads never quite came together, and I couldn't quite love the book. Too many other factors outweighed the good stuff. First, the women: why did every single female character have to be described primarily in terms of her sex appeal? This did not (fortunately) preclude the women from having interesting story lines; the relationship between Lola and her mother is one of the strongest aspects of the novel, a heartbreaking look at how a damaged mother can't stop herself from brutally damaging her daughter, but Díaz buried it under a mountain of T&A. There are several chronic womanizers among the male characters in the novel, so perhaps Díaz is being an equal-opportunity sexist, but I'm not sure that makes things better. I was also annoyed by all the hinting about the narrator's identity for the first half of the book--it was intriguing at first, but quickly became irritatingly coy. The extended flashbacks concerning Oscar's mother and grandfather were interesting in their own right, but seemed merely to exist alongside the main narrative, when it felt like they should have been crucial.
In retrospect, the book kind of seems like a mess. Díaz is a strong enough writer that he can make it a compelling mess, but it's a mess nonetheless.
And, in between writing this review and posting it, I popped off down to Snyder Avenue and the Whitman branch of the Free Library. This morning I felt an inexplicable conviction that Brideshead Revisited was what I needed to read next, so I went to get it and came back with Bernhard Schlink's The Reader and Graham Swift's Tomorrow as well.
I loved Drown, Díaz 's debut story collection, and I wanted to love this book too, but I just couldn't. There were moments that were absolutely engrossing, there was a Rushdiean entanglement of political history with the supernatural, there was lots of Díaz 's energetic prose, there was the lovely shock of recognition when we finally learn that the mysterious narrator is Yunior ("Yunior! I haven't read about you since 1996! Welcome back, buddy!"), there were moments when I could feel the disparate threads of the narrative beginning to form a whole....
But those threads never quite came together, and I couldn't quite love the book. Too many other factors outweighed the good stuff. First, the women: why did every single female character have to be described primarily in terms of her sex appeal? This did not (fortunately) preclude the women from having interesting story lines; the relationship between Lola and her mother is one of the strongest aspects of the novel, a heartbreaking look at how a damaged mother can't stop herself from brutally damaging her daughter, but Díaz buried it under a mountain of T&A. There are several chronic womanizers among the male characters in the novel, so perhaps Díaz is being an equal-opportunity sexist, but I'm not sure that makes things better. I was also annoyed by all the hinting about the narrator's identity for the first half of the book--it was intriguing at first, but quickly became irritatingly coy. The extended flashbacks concerning Oscar's mother and grandfather were interesting in their own right, but seemed merely to exist alongside the main narrative, when it felt like they should have been crucial.
In retrospect, the book kind of seems like a mess. Díaz is a strong enough writer that he can make it a compelling mess, but it's a mess nonetheless.
And, in between writing this review and posting it, I popped off down to Snyder Avenue and the Whitman branch of the Free Library. This morning I felt an inexplicable conviction that Brideshead Revisited was what I needed to read next, so I went to get it and came back with Bernhard Schlink's The Reader and Graham Swift's Tomorrow as well.