So I'm behind. Sue me.
Thankfully, being oh, say, several books behind on a review blog is not a crime. At least not yet, anyway. I don't see it letting up any time soon either considering that I can't seem to help ordering the "Here, Have A Few Billion More Things To Do" blue-plate special for every meal. Tasty, but it kind of leaves me a massive food coma most of the time. Hopefully some well-earned r&r in Germany (two weeks! woo!) will get me back on track.
First up is another recommendation from my bestest book buddy ever (waves hi to Babs). I love it when I find someone who has the same taste in books because it allows me to keep my book budget somewhat in check for a change. Of course, the money I'm going to spend sending books-in-trade to her after she moves to Portland, ME probably makes it a wash.
Anyway, she offered me a shot at Donna Tartt's The Secret History, which traces the story of six disaffected classics students at a fictitious East Coast college and the slow disintegration of the group into fractured, broken people. The novel follows a certain stereotype about affluent and smart white kids - as is to be expected by anyone who watches CSI, they of course turn out to be drug-taking, drink-taking, shiftless, lazy, cold-hearted killers. I guess I should expect to go homicidal any minute now. Clock's ticking - I'm already 23 and probably due to lose my baby-faced innocence momentarily. Tartt manages to lift her book out of the sensational quagmire of her subject matter in some places with good writing, but there's something unsatisfying about books where all the major players are morally bankrupt. On some level it's untrue to the human experience - we're not all saints, but we're not all irredeemable sinners either. Tartt's characters are ultimately revealed to be little more than empty shells with little or no connection to anything, human or otherwise.
The Secret History is a tough book for me. I want to like it for the lyrical nature of the prose, but the more I ponder the plot and characters the more I find myself vaguely annoyed, particularly when I think about the different directions the story could have taken to provide the reader with at least some sense of satisfaction upon reading the conclusion. It's becoming an all-too-common problem in modern literature that well-intentioned authors want to move away from trite, Hollywood, wrap-it-all-up-with-a-silver-bow endings, but they fail to offer much in place of such an ending. There's no moral lesson, no takehome point. All the reader is left with is a depressing sense that the world sucks, and sucks unchangeably to boot. I'm not exactly an optimist, but even I'm aware that in spite of every tragedy that happens in our world, there is some good in life. Saying otherwise is of course terribly post-modern and tragically hip, but it also doesn't happen to be true.
First up is another recommendation from my bestest book buddy ever (waves hi to Babs). I love it when I find someone who has the same taste in books because it allows me to keep my book budget somewhat in check for a change. Of course, the money I'm going to spend sending books-in-trade to her after she moves to Portland, ME probably makes it a wash.
Anyway, she offered me a shot at Donna Tartt's The Secret History, which traces the story of six disaffected classics students at a fictitious East Coast college and the slow disintegration of the group into fractured, broken people. The novel follows a certain stereotype about affluent and smart white kids - as is to be expected by anyone who watches CSI, they of course turn out to be drug-taking, drink-taking, shiftless, lazy, cold-hearted killers. I guess I should expect to go homicidal any minute now. Clock's ticking - I'm already 23 and probably due to lose my baby-faced innocence momentarily. Tartt manages to lift her book out of the sensational quagmire of her subject matter in some places with good writing, but there's something unsatisfying about books where all the major players are morally bankrupt. On some level it's untrue to the human experience - we're not all saints, but we're not all irredeemable sinners either. Tartt's characters are ultimately revealed to be little more than empty shells with little or no connection to anything, human or otherwise.
The Secret History is a tough book for me. I want to like it for the lyrical nature of the prose, but the more I ponder the plot and characters the more I find myself vaguely annoyed, particularly when I think about the different directions the story could have taken to provide the reader with at least some sense of satisfaction upon reading the conclusion. It's becoming an all-too-common problem in modern literature that well-intentioned authors want to move away from trite, Hollywood, wrap-it-all-up-with-a-silver-bow endings, but they fail to offer much in place of such an ending. There's no moral lesson, no takehome point. All the reader is left with is a depressing sense that the world sucks, and sucks unchangeably to boot. I'm not exactly an optimist, but even I'm aware that in spite of every tragedy that happens in our world, there is some good in life. Saying otherwise is of course terribly post-modern and tragically hip, but it also doesn't happen to be true.
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