A well-written novel about irredeemably annoying people
927737
So I guess this is what disappointment feels like. After reading Gillian Flynn's debut novel, Sharp Objects, and loving it to the moon and back, I expected to pick up Dark Places and instantly fall madly in love with it, what with the author's now-established dark and grimy style and everything.

Dark Places proves it's true, what they say about keeping your expectations low. Except for the main character, Libby, her mom (who is also a POV character in certain chapters of the novel), and a couple of other barely-there characters, pretty much every person depicted in this book is the sort of screwed-up you'd just itch to backhand in the face multiple times. I remember reading Sharp Objects, a book laden with horrible people I was interested and deeply afraid of at the same time, and boy, have those characters nothing to do with the collection of soulless pricks in Dark Places.

Ms. Flynn's writing remained great and engrossing, the pacing was pitch-perfect, and I was glued to the book chapter by chapter, especially since they alternated between POVs and always left me wanting to know what was going to happen next. Except not much happened by the end, and instead of closing the book with some shivers and a sense of my-god-this-book-was-a-ride!, I just glared at its cover like I'd been cheated.

In the end, Dark Places is a superbly-written novel about arguably good people who were either brutally murdered or are psychologically scarred for life, and definitely irredeemable jerks who never got what they deserve.
1050529
John Fowles's debut novel "The Collector" is the story of the world's most boring psychopath and his even more boring victim.  These are the kind of people where if you were their neighbor, even if you knew what was going on, you couldn't be bothered to call the police and would just turn up the TV volume to drown out the sound of the screaming.
The title character is Fred Clegg, a quiet, unsociable clerk who has recently come into a lot of money by winning a betting pool.  He collects butterflies as a hobby, but his obsession is a young art student named Miranda Grey.  He kidnaps her, locks her in the cellar of his house, and keeps her like a pet.  He does not have a romantic, sexual, or animalistic attraction to her; he just wants to possess her like a specimen.
Fred allows Miranda all the comforts of home except communication with the outside, and she gradually adapts to her new environment, although she never abandons plans for escape.  They are usually civil to each other, but occasionally violence does erupt.  She keeps a diary in which we get to see her side of things, but since she doesn't offer much more insight into her state of captivity than Fred does, it's almost like reading the same account of the events twice.  By the end of the novel, I couldn't sympathize with her; it's a bad sign when you hope a character dies just so she'll shut up.
Fowles narrates in the first person, alternating between the voices of both Fred and Miranda.  Fred's insipid, inarticulate narration -- revealing his simplicity and lack of education -- got on my nerves after so much of it, and even Miranda's more intelligent narration wore thin with her increasing despair, self-absorption, and shallow thoughts about her unsteady relationship with a much older man, an artist she calls G.P.  I realize that Fowles's intention was to keep them in character, but first-person narration is effective only with interesting personalities, which Fred and Miranda lack (and which Nicholas Urfe in "The Magus" has in spades).  It might have been better written in third person, allowing a more intelligent and descriptive perspective.
I greatly admired Fowles's "The Magus."  It was exciting, intriguing, mysterious, beautifully written, epic in scope, everything a novel should be.  "The Collector," on the other hand, gives the impression of having been written in a hurry and with not much care as to its outcome or impact.  I'm disappointed because it had the potential to be so much more.  It could have been a 20th Century update of the Hades and Persephone story, or Fred could have been an English Raskolnikov.  As it is, it might be an allegory on the state of marriage or a satire on the new philistine English middle class (the "New People," as Miranda calls them), but it goes nowhere with these ideas, preferring to remain an empty, stale fable.
34093
This is not a happy book.
Eight-year-old Miguel swears revenge against the racist vigilantes who murdered his parents and this shapes him as a person while growing to adulthood. With hatred like this on both sides there can be no winner since not even death itself is really cleansing.
An interesting question raised by the author concerns what exactly triggers hatred. Another relates to hangers-on ... do they really hate or are they just taking the easy way out?
Stylistically, the book has its rough spots and inconsistencies (e.g. stallion  pony) and some behaviors are simply estranged from the personalities described, but overall it reads rather well.
2278721
Audacious literally has me pulling at my hair in frustration right now. I've written and rewritten this review half a dozen times, and I still can't get my thoughts organized. There was a lot about this book that I liked, but in the end it left me feeling dissatisfied, and I'm having trouble articulating why.

The novel begins with our protagonist, Raphaelle, moving to a new town for her father's job. Raphaelle decides to use the move to start fresh: she will no longer be the girl who shows up at a black-and-white formal in a hot-pink dress or draws pictures of a "naked and well endowed" Christ on the board at her Catholic school. Instead, she decides to reinvent herself as "Ella," a nice, normal girl who doesn't spit in the face of convention just to watch people squirm.

In spite of this resolution, Ella just can't stifle her provocateur nature. When her art teacher asks her to submit a piece in the school art show, Raphaelle reemerges to create a work of art so daring it sets off a chain reaction of consequences, including criminal charges and expulsion from the school.

Amidst the fallout from the art show, Raphaelle must also navigate her relationship with her quasi-boyfriend Samir. Raphaelle is a vehement atheist, and Samir is Muslim. As you can guess, this causes all sorts of tension, which I found to be the most compelling aspect of the story.

So far, this probably sounds pretty good. At the very least, it doesn't sound bad, right? So what's with the hair pulling and frustration I mentioned in the beginning of this review?

The closest I can come to an explanation is that Raphaelle pisses me off. She's too set in her ways, too focused on shocking people and putting up walls between herself and others. I don't have a whole lot of patience for people who do or say things for no other reason than to cause an uproar. Controversy for the sake of something you believe in or are passionate about is courageous; controversy just to stir the proverbial pot is childish and stupid.

Raphaelle uses being a misfit as an excuse to keep from getting close to people, and when she does develop a relationship with someone, she refuses to give an inch in anything. There is a fine line between being true to yourself and being too proud to compromise, and Raphaelle crosses that line. I felt like she was trying to sabotage her own happiness, making stupid decisions in a sadistic effort to root all of the good out of her life. This was especially true of the ending, which I absolutely HATED. I don't want to share any spoilers, but I will say that the ending is a large part of why I didn't like this book as much as I could have. It was unnecessary and pointless and sums up everything I didn't like about Raphaelle.

As frustrated as Audacious made me, though, I would still recommend it. It has interesting themes - censorship, family tragedy, faith and religion - and it would be a shame to miss out on them simply because the heroine is flawed.

There's also the bonus that Prendergast wrote Audacious in verse. There are times when the rhymes sound a bit corny or contrived, but there are also sections that are lyrical and insightful. My favorite is a stanza that talks about Raphaelle's infant brother, who lived for only three minutes after his birth, and the effect that the baby's death had on the family:

"Darling Gabriel,
Whose only task on earth
Was to break my mother's heart.
It took him his whole life."

I also liked this verse:

"Strong as time and
Tenacious as space but
If love is never to be tested
Or challenged then it is worth
Nothing."

In the end, I'm glad I read Audacious, even if it did leave me angry and dissatisfied. If you're a fan of writers like Ellen Hopkins, and if you can accept a less-than-happy ending, Audacious might be a book for you.

This review can also be found on my blog, http://AngelasLibrary.com.
1344559
This is a well expressed book dealing with the folks who work at a shop specializing in the care and maintenance of old American muscle cars. I am a gearhead and am happy to report that, other than fictional treatment of a real and famous car, I only caught one technical error. Thats truly outstanding but other than admiration for the tech edit, I didn't enjoy a single page of this one.

The reason was simple: utterly unlikable characters. There isn't one single character I cared about and most I actively disliked. I find it impossible to enjoy reading any book where there isn't even one actor which I could root for. Here, there wasnt.

The cast of characters were some combination of self-pitying whiners, low life criminals, treacherous losers who betray friendships and worse. For example, this supposedly high end high reputation repair shop doesnt hesitate to sabotage cars entrusted to it to either boost the repair ticket or exact some petty revenge on a customer they don't like. In one case, a customers car is almost totaled by one garage denizen to make a petty revenge on another denizen. A few of them start a car theft ring lying to themselves that nobody will be hurt.

The book is almost entirely a first person narrative drearily recited by a teen who cant observe anything without an often lengthy analysis of motive and unspoken thought. After a few pages, I was both admired and grew tired of the constant observational additions to the plot which after a while grated on my nerves. In the end, the book just wheezes to a finish leaving us just where we were at the start.

A lifeless, but well written read about dreary, downbeat and often nasty individuals messing around a poorly run garage somewhere in Connecticut.
3259540
Very well written, but the protagonist is whinny and tedious.  She's depressed, anxious, phobic, and obsessive - and never recognizes,despite her interminable internal monologue, that she needs some meds and a good psychologist.  The novel raises interesting questions about art, identity, women's roles and limits.
4037012
Set in the Bay Area of the 1960s, this novel is narrated by Marci Cruz, an eleven-year-old Latina who fervently wishes for two things. The first is for God to turn her into a boy, because she has something of a crush on Raquel, her teenaged neighbor; the second is for Eddie, her father, to disappear.

A couple of times a week, Eddie beats Marci, and Corin, her younger sister, for some infraction, usually with his leather belt. It always occurs when Delia, their mother, isn't home. Eddie always accuses the girls of lying, or says that he had to break up their fight, and Delia always believes him. During an argument, Eddie leaves the house, and doesn't return. Delia is forced to get a job at the local Woolworth's, and things settle down at home. Several months later, during which time he has been living with a woman named Wanda, Delia takes Eddie back, despite the girls' pleading with her not to do so. The beatings resume.

Marci and Corin disown Eddie as their father, refusing to call him "Daddy" or "Father." With help from a neighbor, they tie him up and threaten him with a switchblade. Marci gets a book on karate from the local library, intending to learn some moves to use on Eddie. He resumes his relationship with Wanda; Delia will accept a lot of things, but she will not tolerate Eddie even looking at another woman. Marci borrows a camera from her Uncle Tommy, and sits across the street from a local bar, intending to get pictures of Eddie and Wanda together. Unintentionally, the pictures get into Delia's hands, and then comes the "final" confrontation with Eddie.

This book is not just about domestic violence. Marci nearly gets thrown out of catechism class, for asking too many questions that eleven-year-olds shouldn't ask. Her teacher, Miss Beauchamp, insists on speaking with a French accent, even though she is from Wisconsin. One day, at church, she sees Uncle Tommy and Father Chacon, the parish priest, come out of the same door in the confessional.

In a way, this book is not pleasant reading, but it is very good reading. The author does a fine job at "doing" a pre-teen Latina. This book could easily take place in any part of America. All in all, it's very much worth reading.
4459838
This novel is about the Leeke family who belong to the Mormon community in the Lancashire town of Chorley, and whose members - Martin, the father;  Pauline, the mother;  Julian, Gary and Jennie, their children - each take turns to tell the story.  Martin is imprisoned in his marriage and is drawn to another woman, Nina.  Pauline is an invalid unable to walk and distressingly incontinent.  Bad-tempered Julian is a car mechanic working for Lewis Drake, his gross and abusive boss; and is the only member of the family who rebels against the faith, and he turns out to be mentally alarmingly and dangerously sick.  Gary is coming home after two years away being trained in Utah to become a missionary and an Elder.  Jennie is about fifteen and still at school, and will be in terrible trouble.  There are portraits of other members of the Sect: Sister Ruth Williams and her handicapped five-year old daughter Angela;  the gossipy Sister Maggie Travers.

We learn a lot about Mormon faith, Mormon thinking and the Mormon way of life.  The faith of Pauline and of Ruth Williams, both suffering from profound afflictions, is amazingly sustaining, and I found these two the most involving characters.  Poor stammering Gary, whose return to Chorley the community is eagerly awaiting, feels a failure because in those two years away, for all his own faith, he never managed to convert a single soul to Mormonism.  Martin and Jennie feel constrained by the Mormon way of life, the way  the community watches its members and gently but pervasively controls them.

There are a few obscurities in the novel.  It is only towards the end of it, for example, that we realize that the person Jennie called Lewis and the one Julian calls Drake are in fact the same man.  And there is much behaviour in the story that I found hard to believe, even before the convergence of the dramatic events on the day of Gary's return.  Everything suggests a terrible ending, and Ashworth's tour de force is that we cannot call it bleak.
4772567
Tamara Ann Simpson is an angry kid who is devastated by the sudden disappearance of her best friend, foster child Kebsie Grobser (That name!  Seriously?!) who was also pretty unpleasant.  Tamara is lonely because her beloved elder brother has left home, her mother is a chain smoking soap opera addict, and her self-pitying father always has his nose in a book.  (The author doesn't happen to mention what sorts of books Tamara's father reads, but they don't seem to do him any good.)  Tamara has abysmal social skills and poor role models, as her remote and self-absorbed parents cultivate intrafamiliar conflict and are regularly excluded from gatherings with the cheerful and friendly neighbors.  Kebsie abruptly departs when she is reunited with her mother, who leaves no forwarding address so that her abusive ex-husband can't track them down.

The author deftly makes the reader sympathize with both marginalized girls, who are well defined and believable.  Not so Douglas "Muscle Man" McGinty and the uniformly cheerful and friendly neighbors, who had me scratching my head with incredulity.

Douglas and his elder brother are in foster care following a family tragedy.  Children who tell ridiculous lies typically do so because they have low self esteem and want to be accepted and admired, or because they enjoy conning others.  Douglas McGinty fits neither profile.

His foster grandmother is a sweetheart, the cheerful and friendly neighbors are warm and indulgent, and Douglas himself is a very thoughtful and caring boy who would be a candidate for sainthood if not for his little habit of prevarication.  And this is where I ran into trouble.

Douglas McGinty is just too darned good to be true.  So is everyone in the neighborhood, except Tamara and her parents.  Absolutely everyone accepts Douglas just as he is, lies and all.  No kind parent ever says, "Son, that's not necessary."  Not a single kid sighs, engages in a bit of eye-rolling, or even tries to re-direct Douglas when he starts talking nonsense.  It's not unreasonable to assume that the foster grandmother spoke to her neighbors about Douglas, and that the neighbors spoke to their children, and that Tamara's family was left out of the loop.  However, it is highly unlikely that everyone but surly Tamara and her unpleasant parents would react to Douglas's utter bosh in exactly the same placid and accepting way!

The author does an excellent job of recreating life in suburban New York in 1969, but the characters and plot could have used a bit more flesh and realism.  This is a good but flawed first attempt by a promising novelist.
1139264
Actually, I would give it 4 1/2 stars.  It was worth reading and re-reading.  It showed the goodness in the ordinary, rather annoying people that you run into every day.

This was written in 1961:  the Catholic literary revival was nearly at an end at that time.  The new view was that a Catholic writer should be a writer who just happened to be Catholic, and that to be overtly Catholic would be to be in a Catholic "ghetto"--even though the literary revival had been very successful in reaching out and attacking coverts.  Probably, as a result, the author takes just about half a step back...and is just a LITTLE more of an observer.  But it is still quite good.

This is a book about the pre-Vatican II Church, and it is published by Loyola Press.  Do you see the problem?  Well, they made peace with themselves for publishing it by having somebody write a pre-emptautory strike on the novel as an Introduction--a depressingly common tactic regarding the older books.  The Introduction is stupid:  read it after the novel if at all.
3731214
Ranald Guthrie, the Laird of Erchany Castle, is so miserly, even for a Scot, that the local people believe him insane: he is known to go about the fields (his own and others) compulsively checking the pockets of scarecrows for loose change someone might have overlooked.  You really wouldn't want to do business with him; you would lose money on it. But only after he throws a hard-working family off his home farm because their small children made fun of him do the locals really begin to hate him.  The maid of all work runs away from the castle after a fearful night, leaving only the mad Laird, his brutish agent, a witch-like cook, a half-witted errand boy, and the Laird's beautiful niece and ward Christine in the rat-infested, decaying castle.  A violent snowstorm just before Christmas leaves the village and the castle isolated from each other and everything else, though a pair of unfortunate lost travelers do manage to make their way out of the snow to avail themselves of the Laird's scant hospitality. (Despite, oddly, caviar at dinner.)

The tale is told successively by five different narrators, Rashomon-like, each with his own style, their stories overlapping, complementing,  and sometimes conflicting with each other.  The learned village shoemaker Ewan Bell, who knows as much as anyone about the Guthries and their tumultuous past, writes in a heightened literary style, Scottish inflected, of how the Guthries have treated the local folk (badly, mostly) and how the locals have come to feel about the family (frightened, mostly).  A lively young Englishman, Noel Gylby, one of the stranded travelers (and an Appleby acquaintance from "Hamlet, Revenge!"), takes a humorously detached point of view describing the bizarre and quaint manners of the castle's inhabitants and the discomforts of its arrangements, not forgetting the omnipresent rats.  When events turn tragic the night before Christmas (the Laird unaccountably and fatally plunging from his tower bedroom into the snow-filled moat), he takes charge and sends for help.  In time the professionals begin to arrive, a lawyer, a doctor, and a policeman, John Appleby, and give their own accounts.  It takes a while for anyone to even think they might be beginning to understand what is happening, but then things change, and change again ... and again. The truth is as elusive as the rats. This is a sort of fairy tale, but not of the happily ever after variety.

One of my favorite passages:

"It is a big grandfather clock, nearly old enough to be in keeping with the hall, and with a loud and -- as you would think -- peculiarly slow tick.  You know how competent actors can build up an illusion of overwhelming suspense, of mere, sheer waiting?  I suddenly found the clock doing all that for me.  In other words I found myself projecting upon an elderly and impersonal scientific instrument a mounting and urgent sense of impending catastrophe."

With its ancient family feud, long lost heir, forbidden romance, missing trove of gold coins, rumors of ghosts, and repeated echoes of the Dunbar dirge, this novel is Innes'  romantic and tragic tribute to the traditions of Scottish poetry and balladry.  Though many early mystery novelists were highly intelligent and learned, Michael Innes was possibly the most spectacularly literate.  Speed reading not recommended: this is a piece of writing!
573456
While I would never personally want to be friends with the main character, she is well written. Not what I would refer to as very bright in this particular book - deciding to chase down a man who physically attacked her on the side walk just seems beyond stupid in any world.

The story does deal with domestic abuse and this done well. It's explained on a very basic level how women are drawn into these relationships. It's so sad how men seem to be able to manipulate even the most "impressive" of women, but in this case how they zero in on the weakest.

Would allow a teenager to read as long as there was much discussion immediately after, or perhaps during.
40386
Surprisingly, this is probably the first novel that Ive enjoyed were the protagonist was completely unlikable. An unlikable main character always ruins the book for me. Ani is stuck up, selfish, conceited, snobby, arrogant, and the list can go on. She tries too hard to appear strong on the outside and she is very successful. This is what she wants people to see in her, but shes miserable and has many secrets in her past.

I liked how the author dealt with the controversial topics in this book. Not everyone is going to react the way youd think you would in the situation. You may not even act the way you might think you would. I realized this after I got angry with Ani for not doing something (no spoilers but youll know what I mean).

I was also surprised with a major twist turns the end of the novel. Its something I should have seen coming but didnt.
4099813
If you want to read a reader-hostile book about depressed people, Mrs. Dalloway is for you.  Possibly conceived as a rebuttal to James Joyce's Ulysses, Mrs. Dalloway is readable in comparison and much shorter in length.  However, it uses a "stream of consciousness" style and takes place over the course of one day.  It's a day in which Mrs. Dalloway, a privileged housewife, is hosting a party, and the action follows her from her errand in the morning for the flowers until the guests leave at night.

The stream-of-consciousness style makes the book hard to get into.  Mrs. Dalloway is not an educated woman and her thought process is more random than most.  As her errands take her through the streets of London, the point of view floats from bystander to bystander and it's not clear whether these are characters or just random people.

Whether it's just on this day or every day, Mrs. Dalloway is thinking about her young adulthood, her close friend Sally and Peter, the man she might have married.  She's distressed because her daughter Elizabeth is in the thrall of her history tutor, Miss Killman.  Miss Killman is an unattractive, bitter university graduate who has embraced religion as an outlet for her emotions.  Peter, the man from Mrs. Dalloway's past, has just returned from India and drops in on her during her party preparations.  Meanwhile, a shell-shocked (that's WWI-speak for post-traumatic stress disorder, though this guy is mentally ill) soldier is visiting a specialist in nervous complaints.  While Mrs. Dalloway is milling around London running her errands, taking pleasure in the hustle and bustle of London, the soldier and his wife are walking the same streets, and he is overwhelmed and assaulted by it all.

Mrs. Dalloway is a "classic", by which I think they mean "period piece", not "a book that will always be enjoyed".  It's an interesting window into a different time, but not worth a read for pleasure.
3439222
I enjoyed reading Don't Let Me Got, but there were aspects of the book that really bothered me. The book focuses on the friendship between Billy Shine, a gay agoraphobic former dancer who has no friends, no lover and hasn't left his apartment in 12 years, and his neighbor, Grace, a noisy 10-year-old whose mother is addicted to oxycontin. Grace's neighbors, including Billy and former foster child Rayleen, come together to look after Grace and prevent her from falling into the jaws of the county foster care system.

Grace is supposed to be 10 but comes across as a much younger child (more like 7 or 8), especially when you consider that she's been raised by an addict. Most kids her age in similar circumstances would at least be swearing like sailors but instead Grace calls someone a poopyhead, which is very Leave It to Beaver. Despite these inconsistencies with the character, I found myself liking Grace and rooting for her to stay out of foster care.

Billy is a deeply sympathetic character in a lot of ways (also very funny), but unfortunately he fits nicely into the tragic gay stereotype spoofed in the TV Tropes article Bury Your Gays ([...]. At least Billy survives to the end of the novel but his crush on his neighbor's hunky boyfriend remains unfulfilled and instead he remains mostly housebound, his primary emotional relationship being his friendship with Grace. Poor Billy. He deserved better than that.

The hunky boyfriend is a prime example of the Magical Negro [...]). He smudges his apartment with sage, uses Reiki, and is the only person who can calm down Billy. He wanders in and out of the novel and dispenses folksy wisdom to whoever needs it. Poor Billy falls in love with hunky boyfriend and I was truly hoping for a plot twist that would allow him to get the guy in the end but no such luck. Hunky boyfriend (whose name I can't remember, which should tell you something) is ruler-straight and ends up with Rayleen instead. The character really doesn't serve any purpose except to function as a deus ex machina and as a way to torture poor Billy with a reminder of the love he apparently can't have.

The entire set-up for the novel is unrealistic (sadly, there is no way in real life that neighbors would entangle themselves this way with a neglected kid), and the stereotypes are problematic but I found myself enjoying the novel anyway. The characters, especially Billy, were very likable and the novel was paced well. I zipped through it in two days.
1692935
I rather enjoy the feisty anti-heroine types who struggle with their own humanity.  Only four stars because, even though I enjoy it, it's formulaic.  Well written though; and let's face it, there's a lot of crap writing in the genre.  There's one I had to quit reading even though the premise was interesting simply because it was so poorly written.  One example:  every character could be nicknamed "twitchy" because nobody speaks without a (usually totally inappropriate) shrug.  Fortunately there's nothing like that in this book.  I'd recommend it.
4814414
I finished this book a few weeks ago and decided that it was one of those things I better let simmer on the back burner for a while. On the one hand the book is quite good, being well-written, set in an enticing time period (from 1883-1942) and featuring captivating personal drama(s). On the other hand it is one of the most frustrating books I have read in years. The primary character in this book and the overall tone of the novel make reading it an endeavor. The lead character of the piece, Margaret, lives in exciting times, in (for the most part) interesting places and is surrounded by eccentric characters.  She lives an examined life in that she closely observes people, events and places and forms opinions about these things. However, Margaret chooses to live her life in a disengaged manner. She is pushed into relationships, she is pulled into controversies, she is at the center of great personal tragedies and time and time again she fails to affirmatively act. At times when others are in peril she will makes half-hearted gestures but withdraws if any sort of concerted effort is required to save them. She is emotionally withdrawn to the point of being mute. What is more, she does not learn from experience. By the end of the piece it is clear that she is aware of how others have manipulated her for their own ends and the devastating impact this has had on her life. So, what does she feel? Do? Not much. Rarely have I finished reading something and been filled with such impotent anger.

This is a well-written book that in tone is almost identical to the lead character - emotionally flat. I appreciate the effort that went into writing this piece, but cannot recommend anyone but the greatest fans of this author put themselves through the effort of reading it.

Do not recommend.