claire_fuller_writer's reviews
1030 reviews

Maybe 3.5, or maybe 4. I enjoyed it, wanted to keep reading and find out what would happen to Mimi and her family. The people and the setting were vivid for me, and the idea of a valley being drowned. But also there were lots of little things that stopped me enjoying it quite so much. Each on their own was minor, but together they seemed to add up. Some clunky writing: (I can't find the actual one) but things like 'They didn't want to come in in the beginning'. A big secret that is revealed right at the end without us suspecting that there is a secret. (The secret is great, and the ambiguity of it is brilliantly handled, but somehow the fact that there weren't any hints about it earlier made it have less of an impact.) The fact that Mimi is so nice. She never rows with anyone, never gets disappointed or angry. I know that's just her character, but it did make me want to shake her.
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I hesitate to say this book was hard work - that's not quite it, rather that it is (like all of Roth's books) very dense, and required for me at least, a very slow read to soak up the side-tracks, the backstories, the characters and their histories. I could really only read it in twenty minute bursts before taking a rest. It's like a rich venison stew - you don't need too much of it in one go, no matter how wonderful it is.

And at first when I got to the end, I turned the page and thought, 'is that it'? It does end very abruptly, but as I thought about it more, I realised how clever Roth had been, because we learn what happens to the Swede and his family at the beginning of the book when Skip meets him for dinner: the three sporty boys, no mention of Merry, and the photo of his wife who clearly isn't Dawn, and the death of his father, Lou.
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Oddly, the next book I picked up is A Head Full of Ghosts, also featuring a Merry. If American Pastoral is a venison stew, then my next book and its Merry is a burger and chips. (Sometimes desired, but eaten fast and forgotten.)

This a memoir about a gay man looking after his aging mother in a small town in America. She's losing words, her ability to play the piano, memories. He is trying his best to look after her, but there is one thing they've never talked about: the fact that he is gay. George Hodgman writes so heartbreakingly about his relationship with his parents, whom it is clear he has always loved, but the fact that he had to keep his sexuality hidden not only from them but from the town he grew up in, has affected his work, life, and relationships forever. It's bittersweet, sad, witty and tragic.
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Not at all as I'd expected. We know almost from the start that the protagonist, Lise will die the next day, and the various people she meets as she travels to Italy (probably) on holiday will be questioned by the police. But, in a post-modern way, Spark plays with the outcome, whether characters can direct the plot themselves, and realism. It's hard to say too much without giving away what happens, but I found it intriguing, and some of the writing very funny.
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Eileen the character is damaged, secretive, awkward, lonely and many other things. The voice that Moshfegh creates her with is strong and consistent. I loved the character (and hated her). Moshfegh is also brilliant at setting the scene: the disgusting house, the drunken father, the boys' prison, seedy small-town life in the 1960s. Her life and the place Eileen lives in is sad, engrossing and incredibly visual.
But Eileen the novel, didn't work quite as well. The action is crammed into the last 50 or so pages, and within it, Eileen the character often seemed to behave out of character for the sake of the plot.

Spoiler

She makes a plan in her head of what to do with Mrs Polk in about five seconds flat while Mrs Polk is wailing, Rebecca is shouting and a gun is being waved around. Still enamoured with Rebecca, Eileen goes home with Mrs Polk in the car, to collect her money and wait for Rebecca. But she doesn't bother to wait because some how she seems to know that Rebecca will never turn up. That isn't the Eileen I got to know through the first three quarters. That was a convenient plot device. Eileen would have waited.

The very end of the book however, brought it all back together again. A wonderful ending.
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Sasha returns to Paris as an unhappy older woman. She drinks to remember and she drinks to forget. When she drinks she cries. She meets some Russians and buys a painting; she meets a young man whom she thinks is a gigolo, but whom perhaps at the end of the book she read wrong, and at the very end she takes some comfort from her hotel room neighbour whom she has always hated.
We are right inside Sasha's head and hear her every thought even as she speaks to the people she meets. That took a bit of getting used to, and many times I wanted to shake her, but that's a good thing.
I recently wrote a post on bleak books, and if I'd written it a day or two later this would have been on it. Bleak but wonderful. Poor Sasha.
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It took me a little while to get into this book, but when I did, I couldn't stop. For a little while I couldn't see what the point of the story was. The 1980s and especially Conservative politicians, and rich families weren't something that I thought interested me, but although that's the decade this book is set in, and that's the backdrop to what happens, it isn't about that at all. It's about thinking that you are accepted and welcomed, and then suddenly those that you thought loved you, turning and suddenly you can see them for what they are. Hollinghurst's language is beautiful - nearly every line is a treat - and his writing so subtle that he lets the reader work things out all by themselves. Wonderful stuff.
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I really liked the contrast between the style of writing, ghostly (since the story is narrated by two ghosts - but don't let that put you off and think it's going to be twee) and the things that happen - the death of a woman from cancer and the breakdown of her adult daughter when she returns to the family home. I loved the description of the house as it decayed - things growing out of the window frames, mold and damp everywhere.
Ashworth writes really vivid scenes - the description of Timothy repairing a butcher's cut arm; Annette attempting to cut down a sycamore with just a rusty saw; Netty vomiting seawater.
Just sometimes I would have liked more consequences to come from these scenes; occasionally it felt like they were there because they were interesting, rather than to add anything to the story. I could also have welcomed even a little more oddness.
But still, a great book and highly recommended.
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Absolutely outstanding. This collection will definitely make it into my top books of 2016. They are exactly the kind of stories I like - where things happen, often bleak, sad things. These stories are about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, rather than many short stories which seem to be about extraordinary people in ordinary circumstances. In many of them Haddon gives a nod to the future - a little snippet of how someone's life will turn out. I loved that, but it just made me want to know about that life, and then the next and the next.
Even though I'd give each story separately 5 stars, inevitably there are some favourites: The Pier Falls, Wodwo and The Woodpecker and the Wolf, and least - perhaps Breathe. And the hardback copy sold in bookshops has illustrations by Haddon.
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It seems a bit unfair giving this book three stars because I think it did exactly what it was trying to do: be a sweet little tale about English village life in 1972. But, nothing really happened, there were awkward shifts in between first and third person, and some of the writing was clunky. It was the first 'Miss Read' book I've read, and I'm sure it will the last.
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