![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Summer-Like November
Nov. 3rd, 2017 06:07 pmI was wondering the other day if this would be our year without a winter -- every time it cools down to a reasonably seasonable temperature, it then goes back up. Ugh.
Finished reading Jennifer Egan's Manhattan Beach, and ... damn, I was disappointed. I bought it because I loved her previous book, A Visit from the Goon Squad, and the strength of the first paragraph of this one:
They'd driven all the way to Mr. Styles's house before Anna realized that her father was nervous. First the ride had distracted her, sailing along Ocean Parkway as if they were headed for Coney Island, although it was four days past Christmas and impossibly cold for the beach. Then the house itself: a palace of golden brick three stories high, windows all the way around, a rowdy flapping of green-and-yellow-striped awnings. It was the last house on the street, which dead-ended at the sea.
See how Egan does that? She manages to set time and place so beautifully, so compactly, it's part of the story and you don't even see her doing it. It's just great. Sadly, for me, the first chapter that paragraph's a part of is the best part of the book. After that the story jumps forward, and Anna the adult is so much less interesting than Anna the child.
I didn't care about any of the characters, their stories, or their problems, and I'm afraid I simply could not suspend my disbelief enough to believe that Anna, through pluck and grit, becomes the first female deep-sea diver at the Brooklyn Navy Yards during WWII (I think the year is 1942 in the book). Yes, I know there were women pilots, but the stretch from pilots to divers was just ... a bridge too far for me. I did like some of the set pieces (a minor character departs the stage, we learn of Anna's first sexual experience), but overall it was a big meh for me. A half thumb up. :-(
ANYWAY. Here are a couple of tweets from today that made me smile -- cat and puppy, and 'Blair Witch Project 1999' (warning for vertigo in this one). :D
Finished reading Jennifer Egan's Manhattan Beach, and ... damn, I was disappointed. I bought it because I loved her previous book, A Visit from the Goon Squad, and the strength of the first paragraph of this one:
They'd driven all the way to Mr. Styles's house before Anna realized that her father was nervous. First the ride had distracted her, sailing along Ocean Parkway as if they were headed for Coney Island, although it was four days past Christmas and impossibly cold for the beach. Then the house itself: a palace of golden brick three stories high, windows all the way around, a rowdy flapping of green-and-yellow-striped awnings. It was the last house on the street, which dead-ended at the sea.
See how Egan does that? She manages to set time and place so beautifully, so compactly, it's part of the story and you don't even see her doing it. It's just great. Sadly, for me, the first chapter that paragraph's a part of is the best part of the book. After that the story jumps forward, and Anna the adult is so much less interesting than Anna the child.
I didn't care about any of the characters, their stories, or their problems, and I'm afraid I simply could not suspend my disbelief enough to believe that Anna, through pluck and grit, becomes the first female deep-sea diver at the Brooklyn Navy Yards during WWII (I think the year is 1942 in the book). Yes, I know there were women pilots, but the stretch from pilots to divers was just ... a bridge too far for me. I did like some of the set pieces (a minor character departs the stage, we learn of Anna's first sexual experience), but overall it was a big meh for me. A half thumb up. :-(
ANYWAY. Here are a couple of tweets from today that made me smile -- cat and puppy, and 'Blair Witch Project 1999' (warning for vertigo in this one). :D
