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kilroyThere's a certain type of book that makes me want to write again. Really good books I just enjoy for their own sake. Really bad books I can put out of my mind and move on to something else. But near misses-- books that deserve to be better than they are-- make me want to put my fingers to my keyboard.
This is one of those, naturally.
It's hard to pick apart the threads of why this book annoyed me, which seems only appropriate given the intentional and overwrought multi-threading of the story. Bits of the book are layered, nested, abstracted, and/or partially obscured in a way that manages to be complex without being intricate. The pieces pretend to be part of a meta-story, but they come off as just a pile of scenes. Even the central storyline feels random-- both in terms of narrative progression and basic comprehensibility. This is book-as-invertebrate: no bones to give it shape. There are a lot of symbols in the book, but not meaning.
The characterization is also shallow. The lead's defining characteristic is that he doesn't know what to do and follows other people. He falls in love because the book almost literally says "And then he falls in love." Subsidiary characters are thinly drawn archetypes and we essentially never understand their motivations. I found it difficult to care about anyone in the book because they didn't feel real or interesting enough for me to invest in.
Which brings us to the prose style, which isn't beautiful, sharp, or effective. It feels like a color-by-numbers of a painting you've never actually seen-- you get the picture but you're not exactly attached to it. The dialogue and the description both ring hollow, and you have to concentrate to keep pushing through the actual words.
Which, it's worth noting, I did. I wanted this book to work. There are mysteries! There's a secret world underneath our own! It's kind of about the magic of reading! The concept of the book is at least interesting and possibly great; the elevator pitch for this book would probably name-check some of my favorite fantasies. And having read it, I can say that there are things in the book that are worth reading and remembering.
But there could have been so many more.
This is one of those, naturally.
It's hard to pick apart the threads of why this book annoyed me, which seems only appropriate given the intentional and overwrought multi-threading of the story. Bits of the book are layered, nested, abstracted, and/or partially obscured in a way that manages to be complex without being intricate. The pieces pretend to be part of a meta-story, but they come off as just a pile of scenes. Even the central storyline feels random-- both in terms of narrative progression and basic comprehensibility. This is book-as-invertebrate: no bones to give it shape. There are a lot of symbols in the book, but not meaning.
The characterization is also shallow. The lead's defining characteristic is that he doesn't know what to do and follows other people. He falls in love because the book almost literally says "And then he falls in love." Subsidiary characters are thinly drawn archetypes and we essentially never understand their motivations. I found it difficult to care about anyone in the book because they didn't feel real or interesting enough for me to invest in.
Which brings us to the prose style, which isn't beautiful, sharp, or effective. It feels like a color-by-numbers of a painting you've never actually seen-- you get the picture but you're not exactly attached to it. The dialogue and the description both ring hollow, and you have to concentrate to keep pushing through the actual words.
Which, it's worth noting, I did. I wanted this book to work. There are mysteries! There's a secret world underneath our own! It's kind of about the magic of reading! The concept of the book is at least interesting and possibly great; the elevator pitch for this book would probably name-check some of my favorite fantasies. And having read it, I can say that there are things in the book that are worth reading and remembering.
But there could have been so many more.