Ambiguous and Unsatisfying
932503
I consider myself an open-minded person but claims that God miraculously repaired teeth with cross-shaped silver fillings was a bit much.  Ambiguous and unsatisfying.  I tossed it.
4754671
I really, really wanted to like this. I didn't know what to expect, and I was eager for the book to go in many different directions. [Cuzzy, an 18 year old father going nowhere fast, meets a flamboyant, charasmatic educated drifter named Tracy, who sort of gives Cuzzy a job, while residing in his (we are lead to believe) lovers families home. A relationship ensues. To see what kind you'll have to read it] To say the characters were rushed, had no depth, and were frustratingly incoherent with the world around them, is an understatement. There really is no momentum, the plot doesen't go anywhere, and I don't think the author wanted it to go anywhere. The insert flap says the relationship between the two main characters is "the focus of scrutiny and debate". Say what? If the debate were from some ignorant, blue collar, beer guzzling neanderthals, well then it was stereotyping rather than scrutiny. Other than that there is no real conflict. Is there a clear difference?

The author however, really does a fine job keeping you on your toes, just when a reader's initial pre-conceived notions about a situation is about to ensue, she throws you in a complete whirlwind of ignorance, and voila, the not so ordinary, ordinary happens, for lack of a better phrase.

I don't really know how long it took Sue to write this, but clearly the conflicts could have been so much more engaging, and thoughfully written chapters could have ensued if Cuzzy and Tracy were more tangible. I felt betrayed as a reader as I wanted to be in Cuzzy's world so badly from jumpstreet, yet never managed to really sit shotgun, just sort of was window shopping.

I think the gester on Ms. Halpern to use geology, material science, etc, as from her other non-fiction books of the matter, and bring it into the pre-chapters as non-binding intro's was refreshing, and to have Cuzzy with really no aspirations or intellectual stimualtion, know so much about Nature, was very pleasing. However again, falling short on Cuzzy as a person I wanted to know, the knowledge he had of Nature was not very beliveable, and as a reader I so wanted to believe he would make more out of his life than trucking rubble perhaps and we are led to believe, even in the end that nothing will change for this young man.

Donna Seaman's statement that Halpern's gripping tale about life's myriad hardships astutely considers the dangers inherent in cross cultural exploration, is giving the book accolades which it CLEARLY does not deserve. Tracy's introducing Cuzzy to a world so foreign to him, was merely passe and out of context with trying to actually show Cuzzy could perhaps have an inherent interest in these things.

In closing, it started off really intriguing, then drops off and falls hard and never seems to find solid ground again. The ending, albeit very unexpected and refreshing in a sense, is rushed and dissapointing, and that was a real shame.
2244751
I read Oscar and Lucinda expecting it to be a romance, which may expalin why I was frustrated and disappointed by it.  It is not a romance, or if it is, it is a deeply unsatisfying one, for it breaks the cardinal rule of all romances - a love story, if it doesn't end well, must end tragically.  The love story between Oscar Hopkins and Lucinds Leplastrier ends stupidly, and I find that unforgivable.  The story is told by a descendant of Oscar's, a gimmick that serves no purpose except to let us know, before the title characters even meet, that they will not end up together.  But this knowledge does nothing but aggravate, as the reader is left to watch two people spiral around and away from each other for no reason other than their own silly shyness (towards the end Carey plays the unforgivable trick of making the reader believe, for about two paragraphs, that he may have found a loophole that allows the title characters to be together, but this hope is soon dashed.)  Lucinda, who to me was the more compelling of the two main characters, is dismissed in half a line, and although this might make sense given that it is the story of Oscar's descendant, it still feels like a betrayal of the character.  As if, having left her in a terrible lurch, Carey simply couldn't care enough to show us at least how she managed to find the strengh to pick up her life and start again.  Hardly an appropriate ending considering Lucinda's name is in the title as well.
But even ignoring my disappointed bias, there are other things that bothered me about Carey's book.  Evey single character is a mass of eccentricities, and this streches crdibility and whatever sympathy the reader might feel inclined to give them.  Very few characters ever speak plainly and say exactly what they feel, and when they do it is such a relief, as if the dozens of pages spent watching people bounce off each other like blind mice, misunderstanding everything they see and hear had literally twisted your guts into a knot.  Even the main characters, who have a right to be eccentric, tax one's patience and make you wonder if people could really be that oblivious to the world around them.  That having been said, there are a few characters whose humanity manages to shine through the grime of their mannerisms, such as Hugh Stratton and Oscar's friend Wardley-Fish, or even the closest thing the book has to a villains, the self-proclaimed Captain Jeffris and Miriam Chadwyck.  I actually felt I could understand these characters, and their predicaments made me feel for them (or against them as the case may be.)
Carey's writing is crisp and engaging, and certain set pieces are very evoactive and moving, but ultimately, the story amounts to nothing more than a beautiful  car crash in slow motion, and, like a car crash, seems to have happened for no purpose.  As I said in the beginning of my review, I was expecting a romance, and most of my frustration stems from the occasional peeks of the romance that might have been, so another reader with no expectations might enjoy the book more than I did.  Either way it seems obvious that this book held me in it's grip, and for that, even though it wasn't a very pleasant grip, it deserves three stars.
483393
This is a surprisingly ambiguous story with a deceptively simple plot.  Set in 1900s New York, the story tells the tale of Catherine Sloper, the rather plain, rather dull daughter of a wealthy, domineering father who becomes the target of a charming gold-digger of a suitor.  Will she marry him over the objections of her father?  See how simple that is? But this is Henry James, after all, so the plot extends - like the proverbial iceberg - several layers below the surface.

Catherine isn't a terribly sympathetic heroine - her dullness, her lack of intelligence, and her refusal to stick up for herself will almost certainly grate with self-actualized women of the 20th century.  However, she's much more sympathetic than the uniformly unpleasant cast of characters with whom she interacts in this tale, all of whom see her as little more than a tool to be manipulated for their own purposes.  Her aunt uses her as the means by which to fulfill her own melodramatic  fantasies of secret trysts and the tragedy of doomed love.  Her lover sees her as the path to ready fortune and a life of indolence and ease.  Even her own father demonstrates heartbreakingly few signs of genuine affection,  viewing his daughter alternatively as an interesting scientific experiment ("how will she react if I apply *this* stressor?") and as  a ready affirmation of his own cleverness.  The fundamental principle of sarcasm is making the wielder feel superior by belittling another, and in this tale Dr. Sloper wields  sarcasm with the same brutal precision he brings to his surgeries.

This is no pat morality tale, however, in which the wicked are punished and virtue is rewarded.  Nor is it a thematically simplistic novel, characterized by a resolution in which the main characters change or grow in wisdom.  The world isn't as simple as that, and James does us the favor of positing that we know this as well as he does - and that, therefore, we can cope with an ending that is both morally and thematically ambiguous.  The novel raises many provoking questions, some of which include:  to what extent is a parent justified in preventing their children from making their own mistakes? At what point does principled defiance become merely obstinacy ... or, worse, cruelty?  To what extent do we (knowingly and unknowingly) meddle in the affairs of others to achieve our own ends? Can harm and humiliation caused by the betrayal of others be mitigated by a steadfast refusal never to betray oneself?  And is this steadfast determination never to betray one's own principles an acceptable substitute for living a life devoid of happiness?

In other words, despite the relative simplicity of plot, this definitely isn't the kind of book you take with you to the beach.  However, the novel's moral complexity makes it a worthy read and probably great fodder for book club discussions.
3825160
This meandering Trilogy never delivers on its anticipated revelation and sadly the author's primary reward after enduring 3 novels arrives mostly in the form of flashback vignettes. The revelation as to what Area X is is provided so ambiguously, incrementally and speculatively that it lacks impact and a definitive aspect. In the end the reader is left with an incomplete jigsaw puzzle and a laundry list of questions, as if a fourth novel is missing, although I would not trust the author to deliver in a fourth novel. I will not be returning to Area X. I doubt I'll read this author again as they do not seem to understand the implied agreement when one invests in a lot of setup in a mystery like this. It's like Agatha Christie leaving out the last chapter and saying "well it's the journey that counts, the butler might have done it or perhaps the postman, but it could have been suicide".
1875761
I found this book to be quite unfulfilling for a number of reasons:

1. There is a distinct lack of feelings and emotions in the writing. It is simply a series of random anecdotes and observations of life in a psychiatric unit. Perhaps this style was adopted to reflect the disassociation that Kaysen felt at the time. However the effect is that we feel no connection with the character and no attachment to the story.

2. The writing is extremely simplistic in parts - almost "she said this then I said that"

3. In the final chapter Kaysen contemplates about how she feels she is a "Girl Interrupted". It turns out to be one of the few parts that is truly self-reflective and insightful. (It is an apt and clever name for the book too!!). However the overwhelming feeling is that the reader is almost abandoned with the abrupt ending. So whilst some self-reflection and analysis is introduced towards the end, it is just "too little too late."

I would only recommend this book to someone who is interested in a very superficial glimpse of mental health issues and / or daily life in a psychiatric institution.
866964
I finished Cinnamon Girl: Letters Found inside a Cereal Box with mixed feelings.  On one hand, it had a touching plot: a girl named Yolanda promises to collect all the dust and return it to Ground Zero in order to heal her Uncle DJ.  Although I usually find modern poets overrated, there were a few beautifully written verses in this book, such as: "with my eyes made of little rivers, green / rushing from deep inside, from holy, kind / waters deep-blue-green-green, / where mambos and boleros are born / and guitar girls weep / and burst into islands of fire -  / this / is the / beginning / I wanted, / Sky"  On the other hand, the book as a whole is unmemorable.  It is too short, with not enough time for the characters to fully develop.  Many parts of the plot are left unexplained and the ending is too abrupt.  The writing is sometimes vague and erratic.  All in all, although Cinnamon Girl is, at times, touching and beautiful, it is also quite ambiguous and better discussed than read individually.
93863
I'm not sure what to think about this book. Because there seemed to be a lot of ambiguity to the point I was beginning to wonder if there was any substance to it. Maybe I was expecting to find a roadmap between the cover and backcover. However, my expectations were to high and if they were lower this book might have been the trick.
3304677
I am very conflicted about this novel.  In some ways, I liked it very much.  The point of view is interesting, and the writing is good, especially the rendering of nature.

However, this novel could not make up its mind what it wanted to be.  Is it a domestic family tale, the story of an abusive husband stalking a wife desperate to get away?  Is it a tale of small town gossip and politics, of characters good and not so good, each contributing to the stew that is small town life?  Is it a ghost story?  Is it a mystery?  In the end, I thought it was a tale of parallel escapes and restorations, and though I was intrigued by this premise, in the end I found the execution unsatisfying.

 "What Becomes Us" is narrated by one of the unborn twins within Evie Rosen's womb.  This is an interesting device, and perhaps it is the cause of some of the thematic chaos.  An unborn child is the quintessential unreliable narrator, and I found myself questioning every mysterious event and observation.  Did such and such an event actually happen?  Or did the narrator misconstrue what he witnessed?  The narrator is tied in with the title, since the story covers the nine months of Evie's pregnancy.  Everything that happened to Evie, also happened to her twins:  the events of the novel "became" the babies born at the end.  However, the babies were not the only ones gestating; Evie herself is undergoing a gestation of sorts, one facilitated by her escape from her husband and her "birth" into the life of the small town and her new identity as a mother.

No one could say that this novel is uneventful.  Between Evie's job as a substitute teacher, to her menacing, shadowy husband, to the married man she is infatuated with, to the challenging students in her class, to the interesting cast of characters that make up the town--something is going on all the time, and often the reader does not know what is real, what may be a dream, what may be a vision, or what is simply an illusion.  Indeed, I often felt that if one were teaching magic realism, this might be a good novel to illustrate it.

In the end, however, I could go only so far with this premise.  I recognize that the writing is very good, but I was eager to finish the book.  I wish I had cared more about the characters; though I wished them well, I did not feel really invested in them.  And one last thing:  I do not like to see simple errors in books, errors like "I used to teach a forth grade class."  This book could have used a good editor; there are far more spelling errors (or maybe they are typos) than I can easily tolerate in a finished book.  The copy I received was not a proof, it was a final product.

I have tried to describe this book as objectively as possible.  If it sounds appealing to you, by all means, buy it.  However, I cannot recommend it with any enthusiasm.
3825595
This is a beautifully written book, but the more I thought about it, the more it troubled me. First, it rests heavily on very gendered assumptions about the appropriate roles of men and women. Can't we ever move past the mythology that "real" men are taciturn and strong and responsible for breadwinning, while women are nurturers and caretakers? This book would collapse without that implicit assumption about traditional sexual roles being "right." I also wasn't too happy with the book's assumption that everyone in prison except the genuinely saved are bad actors. Secondly, the underlying Christianity that informs the book at all points is, to my way of thinking, highly debatable. The point of this book is something I really have doubts about -- the desirability of forgiveness. And suffering seems to be required per this author for people to be truly good, another bit of ideology I don't accept. Finally, faith seems to be the ultimate prize, and I don't agree with that either, though I don't disagree with Hulse that acceptance (versus faith or forgiveness) is a great way to find peace. For those of us who question whether Christianity has the answers, this book's lessons are much too pat. Lastly, there were key plot developments that were never well explained or explained at all, such as the reason for Scott's and Wes's dad's ultimate ends -- I mean, no one ever wanted to know why? I was unsatisfied with the explanation as to why Wes didn't go to the last ceremony involving Scott, and the lack of any explanation as to why he couldn't articulate his decision not to go to Dennis. Hulse also never explained how Wes and Dennis' relationship got resolved after the dramatic ultimatum in the scene just preceding their apparent reconciliation. Or, how Wes was going to resolve his own living situation. This was sloppy and unsatisfying plotting. All in all, though Hulse writes well, I'm not sure I'm going to be reading any more of her books.
4286833
What a depressing, wordy bore. Understanding and sympathy for any of the characters in this book is impossible.  They are all lacking substance, and the story jumps around, leaving you dizzy and confused. Also, there is no ending. The story was left uncomfortably unresolved.
1515269
This was a very literary type story  that unfortunately seemed to ramble about with no distinct plot. The book was divided into two sections, which seemed to be very different stories with few overlapping connections.

The ending left me confused, There was no real conclusion and a lot of questions were left unanswered.

I was surprised at the amount of sexual references and overtones in the book. It was a little jarring and unexpected. For such a discreet time period with puritanical characters, sex played a large role in the book.

Overall, the story was not what I was expecting, and I was felt feeling unsatisfied.
1071661
I was very excited when I realized this book was out. Yet, from the beginning of the book, I have been simply confused by Lamott's entire project.  For one, the characters are very difficult to distinguish from one another.  Even now, almost halfway through,  I have to pause, re-read, and try to discern who is actually talking in the dialogue. I still sometimes also have to stop and think, "Now WHO is this?"  Also, Lamott seems to be using a somewhat omniscient narrator who flits from character to character with no rhyme or reason.  Again, I have had to go back numerous time to see who this narrator is talking about, where, geographically, the narrator is reporting from, and even, sometimes, when in time the conversation is happening. I'll be reading along and all of a sudden, mid-paragraph, off the narrator goes to some other time, location, or character.  I so much wanted to like this book, to read it on the patio this spring, and to be absorbed by it. Yet, not so much. The only reason for two stars instead of one is that I am still reading it, at least for now.
1638443
The Pale King is, as you most likely have surmised already, an unfinished novel painstakingly pieced together by the indefatigable Michael Pietsch of Little, Brown & Co. In the foreward, Pietsch warns us that only the first 10 chapters were finished by DFW whereas the remainder was set in stacks of notes but, clearly, not finished. You can tell.
You can tell the way when paved road gives way to gravel when driving. It's clearly a different feel to the book -- not just the occasional strange repetition of unusual adjectives, or repetition of some paragraphs like a surrealist madlib. I expected unpolished and what I got was static.

I read the book on winter trip out to Nebraska eager to embrace the static monotone of an IRS processing center in Peoria, IL in the greyness of a Nebraska Winter. There is a certain beauty to the hyperintense focus on the same mundane details. The 'tornadic' storyline is well done and only intelligible at about 1/3rd of the way through (so keep reading if you're reading this in frustration after the first 200 pages). But the book doesn't fulfill. It feels void, dull, and meaningless in the annoying post-modern way that a lot of concept art feels. I especially disliked (spoiler?) the insertion of DFW cheekily inserting himself into the book -- arguing the book isn't really quite fiction. Other reviews have cited this as an element of 'intrigue'. I agree with DFW who notes he normally hates this type of element and, for me, the insertion of DFW into his own book was entertaining at the same time as feeling weak, empty, meaningless, dull, and void. Again.

The book aimed to give the appearance of coming to some culminating moment but fail to deliver, and it does that exactly. It fails to deliver.
3910989
This books focuses on a specific time in music teacher's life, and mainly around one gifted student whose talents and struggles bring up conflicts for them both. There's something frustrating about this book, in that it starts debates it never finishes, and spends too much time building it all up to just simply shrug it's shoulders and give up.  You're left just was confused, unsure, and blind about things as the protagonist... and maybe that was the author's goal. But as a reader, it's unsatisfying, and annoying, and feels like time poorly spent.
2281223
I eagerly dove into The Jane Austen Book Club, heartened by the laudatory reviews overflowing with excitement at Fowler's homage to Austen's irony, wit, and keen perception.  Michael Dirda, of The Washington Post Book World, goes so far as to say that the novel will make Austen fans "sigh with happiness."

If only this were true.

The Jane Austen Book Club, though the reader can sense Fowler laboring to connect its tone and themes to Austen's novels, fails to satisfy.  While Fowler attempts to employ irony in her descriptions of characters in order to highlight their quirks, she promptly destroys any effect she might have acheived by explaining the irony to the reader.

One such example comes after Jocelyn, a member of the book club, explains how judges pick winners at dog shows.  Fowler writes, "The dog show emphasizes bloodline, appearance, and comportment, but money and breeding are never far from anyone's mind."  Clearly this is intended to make readers think of parallels between dog shows and the social structure in Austen's time, but the parallel is drawn with such a heavy hand that it places more emphasis on the author's Wit in thinking it up than the Truth of the statement.

Fowler, if she had learned the elementary lesson of writing, "show don't tell," might have had a prayer of making her readers laugh, but her habit of drawing attention to herself rather than the story makes the reader wonder whether she means to pay homage to Austen or puff herself up.  Perhaps this stems from the fact that the reader never really knows who the narrator is.  Fowler always uses "we" when talking about the book club, which implies that the narrator is a member, or perhaps a collective "we."

At first I thought the book was meant to be a collaboration of all of the members' memories and experiences, but the sections which digress into long, often tedious descriptions, of various characters' angst-ridden lives do not bear this theory out.  These digressions are all written in the third-person omniscient in the same tone as the rest of the novel.  Since many of the sections of background consist of the deepest, darkest secrets the characters would not tell to others these would not be included in a collaborative work.

The narrative confusion combined with Fowler's heavy-handed treatment of the irony, are the death-blows to a novel already weakened by poor plotting and thin character development.  That people compare this book to Austen's work is unimaginable.  Austen's restrained irony left many things unsaid, letting characters reveal their own faults and quirks or putting an analysis of the character in another character's mouth.  This allowed the reader to participate in the world Austen's novels create rather than be kept on the disinterested periphery, as Fowler's narration does.

Perhaps this book will introduce readers to Austen's novels for the first time.  But I fear that more people will be scared away from them after reading the pretentious, high-school musings of a collection of self-absorbed, shallow people who gather together not to discuss the books of Austen, but wallow in their own cleverness.
2054430
Really...unsure.  I understand making it ambiguous is part of the fun, but it was too much.  You leave the book wondering what the hell you just read, and was it any good or not.