AuntGert

Not Horror—Madness

Revisado: 05-18-24

Silly, ridiculous madness. You can do better things with your time than listen to this silly book that first teases at an S&M relationship. And then teases at a menacing situation where a vulnerable woman will become a victim to an online scammer. And then teases at perhaps turning the tables from victim to predator. And then hints at a horror creature coming into being. And then just ends. Thank gawd.

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More A List Than A Novel

Revisado: 12-09-23

I was overall disappointed by this book believing that it would develop the story/character of young a Japanese immigrant bride coming to the US in the early 20th C. But the narrator uses the “royal we” in a sense lumping all the young brides into one continuum of existence within the context of the hardships of cultural estrangement, little to no personal freedoms, and enormous physical hardships.

I appreciate how difficult these young women’s lives were. But the book is more like a nonfiction essay than historical fiction in which the audience gets involved with the lives of characters as they endure.

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More Meh than Marvelous

Revisado: 12-07-23

I purchased this novel based on the 80% off sale and glowing reviews thinking I landed a real bargain. Well, I’m glad I didn’t pay very much for it, because I was not as taken with the entire production as the other reviewers whose rankings confer upon it 4.5 stars.

I start my criticism with the performances of the readers primarily focusing on Louise-Mai Newberry whose overly affected aristocratic high-brow pronunciations made absolutely no sense for the character of Leslie who was born on and lived her entire adult life in Malay and had never been to England. Yes, Leslie’s parents corrected her and her brother if, as children, they were picking up the native way of speaking, however, her parents were decidedly not aristocrats themselves and would not have spoken in such an exaggerated manner that even the Queen (Victoria) would find off-putting. Because of Newberry’s reading, I found myself disliking Leslie more than I think she deserved to be disliked. There are very few readers who I refuse to listen to twice, but Newberry’s made my short-list.

My next observation about the torture of listening to the “Leslie” chapters, is more to do with how the novel was written than Newberry’s delivery as I doubt it was she who arbitrarily decided to voice what is described as Willie’s ‘stammer.” I don’t have a copy of the printed book, so I have no idea what this pause looked like on the page, but a reader of a physical book would never bog themselves down with a virtual pause/halt/stammer while reading a line that contained it, but we listeners had to endure it—why? How did this stammer reveal character? When the author had Leslie either speaking or thinking about things Willie said, the stammer was always included. That does not make any sense. It’s one thing for Willie’s chapters to include the stammer in dialogue, (and thoughts?) but why do Leslie’s limited third-person’s accounts include them? You yourself are going to have to decide to listen to the book and see if what I’m saying resonates as a legitimate criticism.

David Oakes reads the Willie chapters and the poor man obviously had no choice but to voice this stammer, so while Oakes was a fine enough reader to bring the Willie chapters to life (Willie, by the way, being William Somerset Maugham) why did author Eng find it necessary to pepper the dialogue with stammers ad nauseum? OK, yes, Maugham had a noted stammer, but so what? The novel is not about how Maugham’s stammer created his personality or defined his life’s philosophy or manifested his writing talent. In fact, his stammer is actually irrelevant to this story, yet it is emphasized over and over again—to what end? Authenticity? Please do not accuse me as being an insensitive or impatient person over this condition. I’m not—I am, however, always impatient with authors who add unnecessary details or irrelevant distractions. An author emphasizing an aspect of a character for no particular reason needs scolding, if not by their editor, then me.

As to the overall novel—Maugham wrote “The Casurina Tree” —a short story collection after visiting Malay in the 1920s. Eng imagines that some of the characters and their stories from that collection were developed and fictionalized from the actual people he met in Malay. One such character from Maugham is a Mrs Hamlyn, who is the novel’s Leslie. I can accept that as an interesting set up for Eng’s novel well enough, but I’m thinking that Maugham’s collection of stories has to be far more interesting than the “real” Leslie’s take on life being married to a closeted gay man who is friends with the most famous author of his time, Maugham, also a closeted gay man. I guess it irony, but it’s also “so what?”

The whole thing fell flat for me.

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A Fabulous Tale

Revisado: 11-27-23

I loved everything about this novel—it’s a morality story that’s also a historical yarn while being a fantasy perhaps sci-fi piece. Yet none of those various genres dominate or insinuate themselves as the story of John, the Traveler learns what truly matters.

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Sweet Premise

Revisado: 11-14-23

In these days of the philosophy of clearing out your stuff ala Marie Kondo and Swedish Death Cleaning, the premise of this novel—a museum of loved, but intrinsically invaluable, treasures needing a home instead of a dumpster—is sweet. The novel is a first person narrative engagingly by Witney White. First person narratives often elevate prosaic writing to quite listenable as it is if a new friend is telling you their engaging story. To that end, it’s a refresher novel to be enjoyed when one wants a bit of light fiction as a breather in between more profound work. Even though you could predict nearly every outcome, the author handled most of these conclusions well…but for one….

I won’t do a spoiler and reveal the odd plot point thrown in for seemingly no value because there’s no point in my revealing it here. If you listen to the novel, you’ll immediately know exactly which unanswered question gets answered in a manner that does not do a single thing to develop the protagonist’s character or enhance the story. All that storyline did was jar the flow of the story. It’s not a shockingly horrible murder or anything weird, it’s just completely and utterly unnecessary and irrelevant. Author Mike Gayle—did you need to do that to fulfill a contractual obligation for X number of pages or chapters? Why did you need to do that?

Other than this misstep, it was worth the daily deal of under five bucks.

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The Glutton Fails

Revisado: 11-09-23

This highly anticipated novel was touted by several online book reviewers as a work of both literary and historical fiction, genres to which I am drawn. I pre-ordered it using my next to last credit for the year. I wish I could get that credit back, but I suppose it wouldn’t be a fair demand—I listened to the entire book while loathing it, so it’s on me.

Perhaps my negative reaction is unfair as I’m judging the written work (I’ll address the poor narration later) as literary fiction as a consequence of the online book promoters’ opinions. Author A. K. Blakemore may not have ever made such a claim. While it’s true that the novel is character-driven and introspective, that’s about all it has in terms of its literary qualities as it lacks an over-arching theme (say philosophical or political) there is no character development as the protagonist is as ignorant of why his life is as it is or why life in general is as it from beginning to end. This lack of personal character development results in a lack of reflection of the human condition which to me is an essential requirement for a novel to be considered literary.

As to its place in historical fiction—just because a narrative is set in the late 18th C in the midst of the French Revolution and a myriad of historical people are mentioned and even turn up conveniently for the completely ignorant protagonist to run into (no less that Napoleon even), doesn’t make it a historical novel. What the protagonist learns about or reflects upon in this historical environment is virtually nothing and therefore, the reader gleans nothing.

As to the protagonist—the titular Glutton—his name is Tarare and he is suddenly and inexplicably
cursed with an insatiable appetite that causes him to eat and eat and eat anything organic and at times inorganic just to fill his empty stomach. If we’re to view Tarare’s empty stomach as symbolic of his empty life, soul, existence—ok, I get it, but so what? His eating frenzies only occur when they are used for a pivotal plot point. In other words, if Tarare is truly always starving and unsatisfied why are there long periods in the novel wherein he’s not about the business of gluttonous eating? The frenzies are gimmicks, deliberately described in the most grotesque manner—seemingly just for shock value—to what end? Take away the sideshow freakiness and pare down Tarare’s sad life and how he ends up where he does, and you would have the basis of a reflective character-driven novel that would allow this young man to develop an understanding of himself, but that never happens. He has no idea what the Revolution means and when he’s given a few clues, he simply does not absorb them meaningfully. Why not use the French Revolution to give him an understanding of the meaning of one’s life (try “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens for example). Also, in what ends up as yet another meaningless storyline is the fact that Tarare is sexually attracted to men. His homosexuality is just there and, cynically I got the impression that it could help put a hashtag of LGBQT for sales purposes.

The narration of this novel also made me frustrated as the reader (Graham Halstead) never alters his delivery of any character other than to slightly lightened the voice of a woman. While the novel is set in France, he never offers the slightest French flavor. This should have been read by a French reader who is fluent in English. Every character interacting with Tarare sounds as though he (with a few she(s)) is a wise-guy hanging out with the boys in a generically contemporary place in America—say Omaha, Nebraska. This narrator should only be hired to read first-person narratives or non-fiction. He was awful. Sorry, Mr Halstead this was not a good fit for your skills.

For a while, I kept blaming the narrator for my negative reaction to the book as I was often confused as to who was speaking (truly great narrators are never guilty of that), but the more the novel moved to its conclusion, and I just couldn’t wait for it to end, the more I realized that because the novel itself was merely a series of shocking events that meant absolutely nothing, the clearer it became that no universal aspect of the human condition would be explored or exposed, therefore, rendering the work an overall failure.

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Absolutely Astounding

Revisado: 10-03-23

This is one of the most intelligent, insightful, and intuitive novels I’ve ever encountered in five plus decades of serious reading.

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The Reason I Purchased This Novel….

Revisado: 11-13-21

This novel appeared one day as an Audible Daily Deal. I use those specials to visit genres or styles I normally do not lean toward which is literary fiction. Before spent the $4, however, I went to the book’s listing to read reviews. I knew I had to get it and listen fully no matter how bad it was just to prove to myself that my theory of the “bad” review elements was true. Several people complained that the book contained too many snide political references and the author should keep politics out of the story. My first reaction was—oh my, obviously the side that called the losers in 2016 “snowflakes” sure do get prickly when popular culture pokes fun at them (which is pretty much all popular culture all the time—that side is just never on the right side —of history that is). So, our protagonist has a political perspective…and it’s not their perspective—so what? Characters are who the authors create and are not who the reader wants them to be. A person’s personality and character tendencies can be revealed through how they express their opinions and what their opinions are…so it’s a completely legitimate writerly choice.

As for the novel itself—it’s got big problems of credibility in that someone witnessing a kidnapping would not dilly-dally around for so darn long as does this protagonist to make sure his eyewitness account is heard by someone in authority. The cops do not behave or react as police would either. The whole story doesn’t ring plausible. There is a sub-theme of racial indifference by the police and college administration because kidnapped woman is an Asian student There certainly is “missing white woman syndrome” in America, but two famous kidnappings and murder of Asian woman college students — Annie Le, Yale 2009 and Yingying Zhang, University of Illinois 2017 (who’s abduction is similar to the novel’s) — wherein their colleges acted quickly to find their students makes administration indifference a stretch.

The ‘hero’ is wheelchair bound, virtually paralyzed in that he does not have use of hands or arms, and is unable to speak. His condition is exploited to allow the book to drag out the obvious necessity of being timely in the matter of such a crime. The plot device is far too obvious. The writing is mostly average at best. There are often phrases that make me think the author doesn’t quite know the meaning of words. He described a character’s face as being “ruddy and ashen.” Those descriptions cannot happen at the same time.

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Incest is Not the Main Problem

Revisado: 09-27-21

Spoiler Alert!

Many reviewers are turned off by the incestuous theme of the novel for obvious reasons. The protagonist of the novel, Beatrice Lacey, verges on madness with her narcissistic mania for herself and what she believes is her right—ownership of the family home and land. It’s her obsession that drives her to incest as she believes it’s the route to stake her claim on the property to which she can never be entitled to inherit due to her sex. To convey her madness, Gregory chose to write the novel from Beatrice’s point-of-view in a lurid perverse first person narrative. I get that that method is probably the most successful way to “get into a character’s head,” especially a character who vastly deviates from all moral norms. However, the perversity did not annoy me anywhere near as much as the first person narrative style. It drives me crazy when author chooses to tell a story through a first person POV and then, as the tale seems to climax, pow—character dies. Who has Beatrice been talking to all this time? St Peter?

I’d love to ask Ms Gregory—to whom and how is this character telling her tale? How am I supposed to react to her story—is it her ghost talking? It’s awkward and clunky and does not make sense. It’s not as though Beatrice is speaking her tale contemporaneously to the events unfolding in the novel. She says, “I did this.” And, “then we went here.” Or, “I whipped my brother until he bled.” All verbs in the past tense. When what transpires to be more or less the last verb—‘his Knife came down upon me’ —opps—I’m dead and now my story ends—give me a break.

First person narratives can be very lively and exciting and this one is lively, weird, and perversely fun—the bad guy dies in the end and the good people get justice in the end. Who doesn’t find that satisfactory? In this case though the first person style just does not make sense. First person novels that make sense: Jane Eyre, The Catcher in the Rye, Bridget Jones Diary, My Brilliant Friend, David Copperfield, and many more where the character whose tale is being told by that same character is not dead in the end. Some novels get around this by having the last chapters being written by a third person. That gets clunky too, but it makes more sense than this.

Still, it is a very ambitious first novel and has some strong points. The narrator is excellent. And the novel is free, at least when I downloaded it. I am also going to try the second book in the series as it too is free, for now.

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Rather a slog

Revisado: 04-01-21

Although described as a novel, this book reads like a history lesson with multiple historical facts, descriptions, and citations frequently repeated. Despite such repetitions, the speakers in the history selections are hard to separate and then you find that confusion doesn’t matter so much because these imagined conversations are not especially interesting or entertaining. If Naipaul includes the backstory of colonized Trinidad as a way to understand the island of his upbringing, it’s odd that he only focuses his history on the 17 & 18th C Spanish and British invasions with little to no focus on the Indian diaspora to which he belongs.

Also, as great a reader Simon Vance is, he’s a peculiar choice for this book. Did Naipaul develop a posh upper class Brit accent, abandoning his Trinidadian accent when going to Oxford University? The book is told from three different first person narratives, with only one (Sir Walter Raleigh) being an educated Englishman. Therefore, Vance’s accent and manner of speaking seem to belong to someone other than a Trinidad or a Venezuelan general.

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