On to the next Parkhurst book, her third novel. I’ve read and written about novel #1, The Dogs of Babel, below. I skipped book #2 (Lost & Found) because I started it and there was something I encountered in the plot at the beginning (teenaged girl gives birth at home, alone, and then brings her mother into her room, mother having had no idea daughter was pregnant – and I thought : “not really in the mood to go there right now”). Maybe I’ll go back to book #2 if I feel the need to have a comprehensive study of Parkhurst but I’m fine without it for now.
I didn’t particularly like The Nobodies Album. While I was reading, at several points I wanted to put it down and abandon it because, while I liked the characters okay, the plot just was not grabbing my interest. And yet, I kept going, so either I liked it more than I thought, or the murder plot, straightforward as it was, was more captivating than I realized. (Actually, it wasn't! I figured it out and if I can figure it out, you know it's pretty obvious! I'm not much of a whodunnit sleuth.) Most likely I just didn’t know what book I wanted to read next so just kept going because it was something to read!
But now that it comes time to write about the book, I face the following question: how do you write about a book you didn’t like? Some critics have no problem with this. They are perfectly comfortable slashing a book. Some do it cruelly, some thoughtfully and intellectually, presenting lots of evidence, and some are absolutely hilarious and brilliant in doing it. Here’s one of my favorite examples of an entertaining pan of a book, a review of Pat Conroy’s most recent book, South of Broad (which I thought was an awful book, btw). This review is by Chris Bohjalian and it ran in The Washington Post.
When I was on Page 322 of Pat Conroy's 514-page new novel, "South of Broad," I began to feel that the characters were crying a lot, which wouldn't have bothered me if the characters were children. They're not. So, I began noting in the margins each time an adult let loose with the waterworks. The finding? Characters cry, sob, tear, weep, wail and well up on the following pages: 322, 330, 340, 354, 367, 382, 393, 395, 396, 403, 418, 419, 420, 429, 439, 440, 444, 448 (twice), 452, 462, 463, 465, 466, 467, 477, 490 (twice) and 493. In addition to the main players in the novel, Meryl Streep is tearful on Page 447 and God weeps on Page 476. Bear in mind, these are only the tears I tracked in the last 200 pages of the tale. Hurricane Hugo, the storm that ravaged Charleston, S.C., in 1989 and figures prominently in the novel's final pages, might not have dumped quite as much water on the city as Conroy's characters.
I’d like to learn to be a better book reviewer, and one of the skills needed is the ability to make a decision what one thinks of a book and then present it articulately and with back up. I wrote a review a few months ago for The Philadelphia Inquirer and I was so hesitant to be critical (why? I don’t want to hurt the author’s feelings? I’m afraid I might encounter her and she’ll be mad at me? Not likely! And why do I care?) that after I submitted my review my editor called me up and said “so, did you like the book? I really should know after reading your review if you liked the book or not!” He was very nice about it, but he makes a good point!
There are so many types of reviews. For instance, the long book coverage pieces in The New Yorker aren’t really reviews, but rather summaries and explorations of the topic presented in the chosen book. The writers of these pieces do plenty of their own research on the topic and bring in information that might not be contained in the book. It’s lots of fun to read these pieces without ever having any intention of reading the book they’re about.
The best reviewers, obviously, know a lot about literary history, and can pull a book into a context or literary genre. For example, a review by Jennifer Gilmore in the 7/4/10 edition of The New York Times Book Review of American Music by Jane Mendelsohn begins:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/books/review/Gilmore-t.html
From “The Thorn Birds” to “Brideshead Revisited” to “White Teeth,” the multigenerational family tale can almost always be described in certain ways: it will be long, it will take place over several decades or centuries, its narrative will be tethered to the history of a particular place.
Good reviewers are also not just reading one book by an author. If the author has previously published, they need to display familiarity with his or her other works, and talk about how this new book fits into a pattern or differs, shows or does not show typical themes and approaches of this author, etc. Take Dave Egger’s recent review of David Mitchell’s new book The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, also in the 7/4 NYTBR:
If any readers have doubted that David Mitchell is phenomenally talented and capable of vaulting wonders on the page, they have been heretofore silent. Mitchell is almost universally acknowledged as the real deal. His best-known book, “Cloud Atlas,” is one of those how-the-holy-hell-did-he-do-it? modern classics that no doubt is — and should be — read by any student of contemporary literature. That book, like much of Mitchell’s fiction, plays with narrative structure while never abandoning a traditional love of story¬telling and an unmistakable affection for historical, and adventuresome, settings.http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/books/review/Eggers-t.html
This is why I’m trying to read more than one book by the various authors I write about here. Doable perhaps with Carolyn Parkhurst or even Ann Patchett, but when I get into Joyce Carol Oates or that sort of territory, I’m in trouble!
[More soon on what it takes to be a good book reviewer.]
(posted 10/3; written 7/7)
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