Okay.....
I thought the book was okay. I felt confused, especially at the end, I felt like I was missing something. I did like the use of her mother… “Mom will fix it”, this showed immaturity on Elaine’s part, though the mom was immature herself (is immaturity a family trait—can it be inherited?). The book, I felt, never seemed to complete itself and you were stuck wondering what it was you just read. It was almost as if the characters were stuck together as an afterthought. The author had a bunch of stories—Pat, the Montgomery’s, the children, Mrs. Hansen, etc. etc., with no real ending to any of them. I liked where most of the stories were going, it would have been nice if they were finished. What was with the hole in the ceiling and the thing about Elaine being a fountain when Paul smoked crack? These stories in the book seemed added to fill space. With that being said, the book wasn’t the worst thing I have read, but certainly not the best.
posted by Anonymous at
5:30 PM
1 Comments:
The smoking crack thing is from a previous short story in which Paul and Elaine are characters.
I hated the ending. It was trite.
However, the rest of the novel I enjoyed. Even though elaborating American middle-class suburban alienation grows cliché, she did it with a humor that I appreciate.
Elaine’s unwillingness to take responsibility, to leave the nest and fully inhabit adulthood, was, I thought, indicative of her generation’s middle-class population. Her mother’s story was interesting in that it highlighted how women who work in the home, mothers in particular, don’t get to retire ..ever, it seems.
The ending creates a coda that indicts the characters’ (parents’) self-absorption as primarily destroying the children. That’s a fine point, but there were more interesting final comments to be had, I think. The end reminded me of The Ice Storm. Have you read or seen The Ice Storm? It makes that point in a far more eloquent manner.
Anyway, overall I was a happy to have a light, quick, and relatively entertaining read, so I’m pleased with the selection. See you on Friday.
By
arwilson, at 7:01 AM
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