Gerry's review of Lottery
Lottery by Patricia Wood (Goodreads author!)
I just finished reading LOTTERY! I was thinking of three writers as I was reading it: Charles Dickens and Annie Proulx and John Irving. I was thinking of Annie Proulx and John Irving, because the language of the characters is so real and honest, and yet there is something unreal about them as well--not in a bad way, of course! And that's where Dickens comes in, I think. Ms. Wood's characters seem to be completely evil or completely good as are Dicken's characters, for the most part. The only exception in the LOTTERY is probably David. And then I was thinking about the state of fiction in general and I was then thinking that a lot of Irving's and Proulx's characters have that same quality of good or evil with little gray area. I don't think the world is that way at all, but I think fiction should be that way. I think we need more fiction like Ms. Wood's fiction, not because it's uplifting--which it is--but because there is some kind of ringing truth in the words spoken by the characters...more
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