false 1 4 false false Mon Oct 20 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Oct 23 14:55:14 -0700 2008 Thu Oct 23 14:57:52 -0700 2008 Mother of Pearl by Melinda Haynes. I’m feeling guilty, first, because I didn’t read the whole book, finishing only about the first third. I rarely don’t finish books, driven not only by an inner compulsion to complete what I’ve begun but also by the conviction that the author deserves his or her work to be read in its entirety before judgment is passed, and in this case I have failed Haynes. I feel guilty, second, for having the temerity to evaluate a work I didn’t finish, knowing that I didn’t experience her vision or argument in its fullness, thereby opening myself to the accusation of unfairness. But as day after day passed, each day finding me dragging myself back to read another chapter, each day finding me less and less interested in her characters or narrative, I finally decided that life is simply too short and that there are too many books I am champing at the bit to read for me to spend more time on something I was finding, frankly, boring. And so I’ve spent the past several days not reading the book and, instead, pondering why I am giving it up. This was Haynes’s first novel, I believe, and, like many first novels, it seems to try to do too much, to be too all-inclusive, to try to include every interesting character the author could imagine, every subplot that seemed intriguing, every clever plot device that might be used. In trying to convey southern Mississippi in the 1950’s, Haynes seems also to be trying to convey every regional and racial stereotype of which she’s aware. It’s just too much, and the novel seems to fragment and scatter as a result, nothing being explored in enough depth or subtlety to be interesting or credible. I am not at all disinclined to a willing suspension of disbelief, but there must be elements for me to grab onto, pieces of flotsam or jetsam to grasp hold of and float on till something more substantial arrives, and during the first third of this book there were none. Letting go and drowning was better than trying to hold out. In fairness, this may best be viewed as a coming-of-age novel, and perhaps I’m old and jaded enough to want to read one more coming-of-age novel only if it is extraordinarily good. This one isn’t. If I want to capture yet again the flavor of the South several decades ago, I’d much rather reread To Kill a Mockingbird; now that was an experience worth having!]]>