The Middlesteins Review

The Middlesteins - Jami Attenberg

2012

 

So, you know how you never actually trust those blubs on the back (and front, and side flap, and first five pages) of a book? Because they're all probably very expensive lies? I mean, does anyone actually, seriously consider them when you pick up a book ? Right, so I always kinda sorta scan over them just because they're there and when you know how to read, it's hard to not-read something that's there (I highly recommend GRRM's blurb on The Magicians, though, because you can tell how obviously bitter he is about that Hugo award in 2001 (jk, ilu George, plz don't ever hate me)). But I have to say, if you believe just one book-blurb in your entire life, believe Jonathan Franzen's blurb on The Middlesteins. It's right there, smack-dab on the cover and basically sums up exactly how I feel about this book.

So. Edie Middlestein is morbidly obese. Very literally. She is obese to a morbid extent. She has diabetes, has already had two surgeries in her legs, her doctor is hinting she may need a bypass, and she's still hitting up MickyD's, Burger King, and a Chinese restaurant all in one afternoon. At sixty-soemthing-ish, she quite frankly, doesn't seem to care. But when her husband of over thirty years leaver her, her children (and children-in-law) rush in to fill the vacuum of caring for her. Or at least, the motions of care. Despite their awkwardness and emotional distance, they all try to come together to help their mother. But the question remains whether you can change someone who doesn't want to change.

This is another one of those books that takes your from point-of-view to point-of-view so that you form a more rounded opinion of each character and are not shaped by the other characters' biases. For instance, when Edie's husband, Richard, first leaves her, naturally I assume he's some kind of terrible person. But then we get Richard's POV and we see that she was constantly criticizing and hounding him and that there hasn't been any love-loss between them for years.

The one thing I didn't like was that sometimes Attenberg jumps around too much without really settling you into it. There are chapters titled like "Edie, 241 pounds (or some other weight)" and that's our only frame of reference for the chapter at least until a page or two in, which made it hard to orient oneself in how old the characters were supposed to be at that time. She also had the tendency to trail off into extended flash-forwards, which sometimes worked, and sometimes didn't. On the one hand, it provided insight in to the characters' futures and how the events of the present (past) affected them in the long run. On the other hand, it sometimes meandered too far from the story going on at the moment and made it hard to jump back into the present and keep track of what was the present and what was the future.

I'm going to quote Franzen's blurb here because he basically said it exactly how I would have: "The Middlesteins had me from its very first pages, but it wasn't until its final pages that I fully appreciated the range of Attenberg's sympathy and the artistry of her storytelling."

This book really did grab me from the very first pages--initially, I wasn't sure if I was interested in checking it out,  but then I skimmed the first couple lines and I absolutely had to read more. And while the whole book was good throughout, it was really elevated by the ending.

4/5 big, fat Fancies.

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore Review

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore - Robin Sloan

2012

Hey, you guys, this book, it totally glows in the dark. Scared the ever-loving crap out of me when I went to bed with it on my nightstand. It's a good thing it's not a scary book, otherwise it would have gone straight out the window and I'd have slept with the lights on for a month. Also, they've really improved on glow-in-the-dark technology since I was a child. Anywho, that's probably one of the most redeeming features of this book, so let's get into it, shall we?

Clay Jannon is an art school grad which means he's underemployed. After the new bagel company he worked for, so aptly named NewBagel, went under, he finds the only job he can as the overnight clerk at a mysterious 24-bookstore. The bookstore's regulars seem to consist of a few strange people who arrive at all hours, urgently demanding volumes from the tall shelves in the back that appear to be written in some kind of code.

Okay, so this book wasn't terrible, but there were definitely a few things that I take issue with. For one thing everything felt just so very, very contrived. Every event that happened is so perfectly convenient and it felt like there were hardly any real problems at all. The plot seemed lacking in that you've got this secret society and an ages-old code...and yet nothing's really at stake. The most intimidating thing the "antagonist" (for lack of a better word) seems capable of is a menacing phone call from three thousand miles away, and the cost of failure is...ennui. And while it doesn't seem possible that this story could get any more set-up, the ending make little sense, happens way too conveniently, isn't really explained, and happens so fast--like Sloan was running out of time and had to slap something really quick together.

The whole book felt like it was trying to be whimsical, and looking at the plot summary definitely seems like it could have been--that's why I picked it up. But the writing is very bare-bones "I did this. Then this happened. We looked over there." There's nothing clever about the prose or the story (because if it ain't got wit, it ain't got whimsy). Everything all just comes down to technology and ooo! This gizmo is capable of this! Problem solved! Hooray!  And the whole thing about a company that specializes in the animation of boobs? I seemed like it was supposed to come off quirky and cute, but really, that's just creepy.

It's supposed to be an adult book, but the writing level and the plot complexity pegs it at a much more juvenile level. Although, to say that would even be an insult to juvenile literature because A Wrinkle in Time is also  juv lit and it's brilliant. 

This was supposed to be my break from all the depressing books I've been reading this year so far, but I'd prefer sad and well-written to this. 

Actually, now that I've written all that out, this book was kind of terrible.

2/5 Fancies.

Read Instead: The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Maverick Jetpants in the City of Quality Review

Maverick Jetpants in the City of Quality - Bill Peters
2012

So I kind of had to read this book because it takes place in my hometown. Since not that many do, I always get really excited when I find one that does because then the book is all "I drove down X street, past Y street, and that shady gas station", I'm like "I KNOW X STREET AND Y STREET AND THAT IS  A DAMN SHADY GAS STATION" and it's just a really good time. Rest assured, there was a lot of that in this book.

Right. It's 1999 and Nate Gray is the definition of a twenty-something loser-- junior college dropout, unemployed with no immediate plans to become employed, lives with Mom...etc.  He spends most of his time cruising around town, making jokes with his friends...and that's about it really. Suddenly, his best friend, Necro, starts hanging out with some freaky weapons-touting-NeoNazi-types and there's all these explosions and fires around town and Nate starts to suspect that maybe Necro is involved. But really he just wants to know if they're still friends or what.

To be honest, it felt kind of like a really extended short story and was kind of meander-y. There was an actual Plot, but the narrative seemed to drift in and around it. There'd be a chapter speculating on the arson and Necro's possible involvement in said arson, and then in the next chapter, they're driving some random girl to Buffalo.

  And I get it, the Plot's not the point of the story, it's a coming-of-age/slice of life story. But there's a certain level of cohesion I just felt was lacking. Then the Plot ended...and stuff still kept happening, and while none of that is necessarily bad per se, it just felt very...so what?

In fact, I think that's pretty much the main thing  about this book. Peters tries a lot of interesting stuff that isn't bad, so much as...improperly executed? For instance, Nate and his friends use this in-joke slang that Peters melds into the dialogue and narration of the book which reminded me a little of A Clockwork Orange, but it didn't come off as successfully as A Clockwork Orange in that it never really seemed to click. But like I said, it's not terrible. There are some nuggets of really, really, good writing scattered throughout. The problem is that the whole book isn't at that same level. That's not to say that the rest of his writing is bad, it's just...not as good.

This is Peters' first book and it really reads as such, but he's by no means a lost cause--he definitely has potential and, as with everything, I'm sure he'll improve with time and practice. I just don't think Maverick Jetpants was quite as well put-together as it could have been.

 I was sort of wavering between 2.5 and 3, because I kind of liked it, but I was also kind of meh, but it's not really that bad, but also it wasn't that great...........

 3/5 for the sake of hometown pride.

Read A-Likes: Ghosts & Lightning by Trevor Byrne

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Review

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs

2011

You see this creepy-as-all-hell cover and then you see the book is smattered with these weird and freaky vintage photos and you think “This looks like one spooky book!” And the inside flap continues to lead you along that track—horrific tragedies! Abandoned houses! Dead children! Wales! If that’s what you’re looking for…just flip through the pictures and put together your own story in your head because I guarantee you it will be 10x scarier than this book.

I feel like so much more went into the marketing and package of the book than into the actual content of the story. The cover is nice and eerie, the end paper and title pages are full-color (or rather, black and brown, but that’s more color than most books get), the paper's thick, and of course, there are those creepy photos throughout. It even has a book trailer. But no matter how fancily you wrap up a dead bird, it is still a dead bird.

 So, Jacob's grandfather likes to tell these stories about how when he was a child he was sent away from home to an orphanage on a Welsh island, he was accompanied by other "peculiar" children and supposedly kept safe from "monsters". As Jacob grows from wondrous child to petulant teen he realizes that his grandfather's tales are probably just tall tales. Then his grandfather is horrifically killed in an "accident" and Jacob heads off to Wales to visit his grandfather's old home as a form of closure. But it soon becomes apparent that his grandfather was telling the truth all this time. That's about as far as I can go without spoiling anything and that's about as far as the blurb goes also. But if you think this is going to be some really creepy ghost story, I'll save you some time. It's not.

 When I first saw the book, read the summary, and heard a bunch of reviews talk about how scary it was, I was really hoping for something like The Orphanage. What I got was just another YA supernatural fantasy, complete with tacked-on romance, unsupervised precocious teens, and a sequel in the making.

I'm not angry, I'm just very disappointed. Okay, and a little bit angry.

Admittedly, I don't read all that much YA (and this book is one of the many reasons why), but I can tell when a book is written at a lower level but written well versus when a book is just poorly written. Unfortunately, I have to say this book fits the latter. But the really frustrating thing is that it didn't start off that way. Riggs clearly knows how to write, as least some of the time. And I did actually finish the book, which I guess says something. Even when it became apparent that this book was not what I was looking for, I kept going because I still wanted answers (I won't be reading the sequel, though). However, as the book progressed, the quality of the writing seemed to decline. Maybe Riggs and his editor were getting too close to deadline or something because by the end, his sentences, dialogue, and plot points were just downright sloppy. Also I find it hard to believe that a 16-year-old in "gifted" classes, who uses words like torpor and soporific, has never heard of Ralph Waldo Emerson and lacks the ability to draw basic conclusions from fairly obvious clues. It's like Riggs couldn't decide whether this was an older teen or a middle grade book and then kind of failed at both.

Then there’s the matter of the pictures, which Riggs seems to use as a crutch, except that it’s a broken crutch. Rather than giving us a description of some characters, he would simply say something like “They looked like their picture” INSERT PICTURE. But the problem with this is that he’s not consistent. When he introduces us to one character, he tells us he recognizes her from a picture, and proceeds to show us a rather blurry, unclear photo of what I thought was a ten-year-old girl. And so I assumed this character was a ten-year-old girl, until pages later it became apparent that she was a teenage girl. The same thing happens with another character. We’re given a picture, in lieu of a description, of a little boy. And then later on, we’re given another picture of him only this one shows a much older boy. WHICH IS IT RIGGS? And then there’s the actual incorporation of the photos. Riggs describes the picture “It has this in it and with this and looked like this” and then we’d get to see the picture which just felt very…pointless. What I really didn't like, though, is that he gives an explanation for the oddities in each picture which diminishes their creep-factor. I don’t think Riggs realizes that not-knowing is far scarier than having a detailed explanation for everything, especially when the explanation itself isn’t all that scary.

There's so much more I could say against this book, but that would be spoil it and make this review longer than I'm sure anyone cares to read, suffice to say (hint: mild spoiler coming up), Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is yet another incarnation of X-Men/Harry Potter/Charlie Bone, and a poor one at that. If you're cool with that kind of story, then go ahead and read it because you'll probably enjoy it more than I did.

  Speaking of twins, 2/5 Fancies. 

Read Instead: A Dark Dividing by Sarah Rayne