Dear Bookclub,
It was a dark and stormy afternoon; flood warnings, tornado watch and a parking lot with available spaces provided a perfect setting for our meeting of the minds. Lunch at Cork & Craft was a delicious backdrop to the memory-drop of "Among the Ten Thousand Things". Agreement that the book was a wasteland that should not capture any of our precious brain cells for future reference, we realized the power of a Random House marketing department. We'll probably remember it forever. Put best in his last two paragraphs, check out this Goodreads reviewer:
Julia Pierpont is a graduate of the NYU Creative Writing Program.
That is all you need to know. It explains a great deal.
She
was a Rona Jaffee Foundation Graduate Fellow. She was a Stein Fellow.
She has won awards for her writing. So she must be a brilliant writer,
yes? Literary agents went looking for her.
AMONG THE TEN THOUSAND
THINGS is her work of debut fiction. The prose is, indeed, very pretty.
The sentences are well crafted. The paragraphs sing with the rhythm of
syllables and pauses.
Agent Elyse Cheney sold the book to Random
House (which provided the review copy in use here) for six figures.
Clearly the publishing industry expects big things from Julia Pierpont.
What is the novel about?
The
blurbs will tell you it is the story of a marriage falling apart. As a
reader, I will tell you it is a narrative of New York City whingers. Ah
Christ, the angst and the mental suffering. Everyone in the novel is so
in tune to themselves that a reader cannot like them. Unless you are
part of the New York City whinging crowd, in which case you'll find
their portrayals brilliant.
Did I mention that the prose is lovely? It's a beautifully written novel.
The problem comes in the entertainment factor. There isn't much storytelling to speak of.
So
we have Deb and Jack and their two teenage cartoon children. He's a
serial adulterer and she's a failed ballerina who found herself up the
stick and Jack did the right thing. The children do and say what
stereotypical teens do and say. They're as self-centered as their
parents, and equally dull.
Jack's latest piece on the side sends
Deb a litany of sexting and assorted emails and the daughter reads it
and then the son and then Deb and then Jack's art installation goes bad
and the marriage is just falling apart. Then we get to the middle of the
novel and the author shifts to "too cute by half" mode with a series of
staccato sentences that reveal the fates of the characters.
Well,
so, no need to read the rest when you know what's going to happen and
when the daughter runs away from home you know she'll be found because
the author told us earlier so you flip through to see if anything
important happens but it doesn't. The whinging carries on to the end.
You
read a book and wonder how such shite gets published. The publishers
are pursuing students of creative writing who write about people like
those in the publishing industry, characters that the publishing
industry can relate to. The rest of us, the common readers, are supposed
to see the brilliance, or be considered Philistines who don't know good
literature when it smacks them in the face.
So I must be a
knuckle-dragging Neanderthal because I found nothing to like about this
novel. The writing is there. But it isn't enough to make a full-length
novel. Tell me a story.
We missed TG but honored her input as she shared a favorite quote from the book that all had remembered and very much appreciated:
“You said, ‘What do you want a child for? You will never again know when it is safe to feel happy.’ ” “Sure,” Ruth nodded her small blond head. “Like having your heart walk around outside your body the rest of your life.” She stood and walked back to the kitchen. “Am I wrong?” “No.”
A collective sigh went around the table. Pierpont's book was then laid to rest. (Mine is in the Salvation Army box).
With a renewed sense of responsibility for choosing a good book, we all became extremely alert as Wanda suggested three titles to carefully VQ-consider:
"The Door" Magda Szabo *chosen
"The Orchardist" Amanda Coplin
"H is for Hawk" Helen Macdonald
Looking for an amazing book to read? I had partially mentioned, (term for not remembering full title), a book I'd just started for last Friday's La Jolla Literary Society meeting. It seemed to be a gem and I wasn't sure if it was just a contrast of anything to Pierpont's book or I was truly smitten. Validation to the later... it is really indescribable .... a reviewer in Goodreads writes her piece as a letter to the author asking him to please write the review because she could never write 'masterful, magical, mesmerizing' the way he does in order to merely describe his book. "The Tsar of Love and Techo" by Anthony Marra. Please just read it. I don't want you to have an idea of what you are getting into (I didn't and I love that). I just read NYTimes book review and truthfully, the book would not have appealed to me if I had read that piece before reading the book. It is written with such artful technique and it is story after story!! It's about something!! It's about many things!! Finally, let me share another bit about this book. As many of you know at LJLS meetings, a member named Mary Taylor introduces the authors with much anticipated wit and panache. Every once in a while she is unable to attend; a disappointing groan goes through the luncheon tables when this is announced and indeed that happened Friday. However, in her place, yesterday, was Ann Patchett!!!! We were thrilled and rapt as she introduced Tony Marra as being one of the best novelists ever- she was ecstatic about his talent. Wow. She stared at him throughout his talk (he was brilliant and so funny) like she was a teen at a Beatles concert.
Happy Reading!
LK
