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What I've been reading, what I'm reading
Jun. 18th, 2013 01:01 pmThe Likeness, Tana French. I couldn't decide if I even wanted to read this after my irritation with In The Woods and its ending that didn't solve the mystery. Well, it solved the murder but it didn't solve THE MYSTERY. But somehow I bought this anyway and then it looked like a good book to read on a plane, and I wasn't disappointed.
The premise here is completely unbelievable: a detective who's the spittin' image of a murdered woman will go undercover and live in her household to catch the killer. There's a lot of shilly shallying about whether or not the detective will agree do do it (though of course we know she'll say yes, that's the point of the book.) Maybe that helped me, the reader, overcome my skepticism because, as ridiculous as it is, it works. The detective more than inhabits her role and is drawn into the emotional life of the group - why shouldn't she be? this is her "family" - and that's what won me over. The characters and the emotions felt so true. I finished it a couple of weeks ago and am still thinking about them and how things ended and how they might have been different.
Summer and Bird, Katherine Catmull. Originally I wrote a long review explaining everything I didn't like about this book, but I'm sure nobody else cares. The poetic style isn't for me, and I was annoyed by the magical world, which wasn't described enough to feel real. It also doesn't seem to have clear rules that the sisters must obey on their quest to find their parents. For me, learning the rules, being thwarted by them, and working with them is what gives magical stories (Oz, Edward Eager, E. Nesbit, Harry Potter) their tension. In this book, things just happen to the girls. They have some agency but are passive in many ways.
Some of the emotional things felt true and moving, like each sister's concern for and resentment of the other. The depiction of how someone can be made to distrust and hate a loved one, and learn to have contempt for the weak really worked. Other things didn't - the abandonment issues, like the Swan Queen's abandoning her people and the mother abandoning her children, didn't feel worked out. The ending was unsatisfying, especially the father's role.
Also, could she have chosen a clunkier term than "the attainable border" for one of the major plot points?
Adam and Eve and Pinch Me, Ruth Rendell. A genial con man is involved with several women, one of whom is crazy. What could go wrong? A number of tangled web weavers’ lies intersect in curious ways. Rendell is magnificent at describing how people make bad decisions that make sense at the time, and the way emotions change as time passes. The tension towards the end of this one is deliciously unbearable.
A Death in the Family, James Agee. I've read an excerpt from this but never the whole book, and I'm really liking its stately pace and beautiful descriptions.
The premise here is completely unbelievable: a detective who's the spittin' image of a murdered woman will go undercover and live in her household to catch the killer. There's a lot of shilly shallying about whether or not the detective will agree do do it (though of course we know she'll say yes, that's the point of the book.) Maybe that helped me, the reader, overcome my skepticism because, as ridiculous as it is, it works. The detective more than inhabits her role and is drawn into the emotional life of the group - why shouldn't she be? this is her "family" - and that's what won me over. The characters and the emotions felt so true. I finished it a couple of weeks ago and am still thinking about them and how things ended and how they might have been different.
Summer and Bird, Katherine Catmull. Originally I wrote a long review explaining everything I didn't like about this book, but I'm sure nobody else cares. The poetic style isn't for me, and I was annoyed by the magical world, which wasn't described enough to feel real. It also doesn't seem to have clear rules that the sisters must obey on their quest to find their parents. For me, learning the rules, being thwarted by them, and working with them is what gives magical stories (Oz, Edward Eager, E. Nesbit, Harry Potter) their tension. In this book, things just happen to the girls. They have some agency but are passive in many ways.
Some of the emotional things felt true and moving, like each sister's concern for and resentment of the other. The depiction of how someone can be made to distrust and hate a loved one, and learn to have contempt for the weak really worked. Other things didn't - the abandonment issues, like the Swan Queen's abandoning her people and the mother abandoning her children, didn't feel worked out. The ending was unsatisfying, especially the father's role.
Also, could she have chosen a clunkier term than "the attainable border" for one of the major plot points?
Adam and Eve and Pinch Me, Ruth Rendell. A genial con man is involved with several women, one of whom is crazy. What could go wrong? A number of tangled web weavers’ lies intersect in curious ways. Rendell is magnificent at describing how people make bad decisions that make sense at the time, and the way emotions change as time passes. The tension towards the end of this one is deliciously unbearable.
A Death in the Family, James Agee. I've read an excerpt from this but never the whole book, and I'm really liking its stately pace and beautiful descriptions.
