A truly agonizing read. My second Fitzgerald, with The Blue Flower being the first. (Loathed it, too.) Despite my affection for vague, artsy, rambling books, Fitzgerald's narrative style just doesn't hit me right. Reading her gives me the same frustration I get watching a John Sayles film: being dropped into the middle of things and leaving without resolution doesn't give me anything but a headache.

Picked this up only because of Read Harder 2022 (an award winning book from the year you were born); this seemed the best of a bunch of meh options (Dreamsnake, The Year of the French, Gloriana, and The Great Gilly Hopkins).

This took me nearly a month to read but I still feel like I was missing whole swathes of story.

Did Nenna and Richard sleep together? Did Maurice and Edward die? Did Martha and Heinrich sleep together?

And then in between puzzling whether shit happened, we observed meaningless stuff, like boats sinking and truant kids being rude to adults, a slice of 1970s London -- an era I don't enjoy anyway. My takeaway of boat life is that it's damp and grimy and does a number on your marriage. Or maybe people need to consider their spouse before buying a boathouse? Anyway, this book is stupid/too fancy for me.