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This Languid Earth
The greatest tragi-comic romantic sci-fi ghost story written this millennium.
364 pages, Paperback
First published August 19, 2014
2 people are currently reading
127 people want to read
About the author
Paul McCormack
9 books10 followersI hate writing these. First off you have to decide between using first or third person and neither seems particularly satisfying:
Paul McCormack hates writing his own bio.
See? It just seems off. But on the other hand first person seems either unnaturally familiar or pre-packaged.
I'm not that interesting. And even if I were, I wouldn't tell you. No offense, I'm sure you're great and all, but who likes the guy who starts a conversation with "I'm pretty great," or "Google 'people who kick ass' and I'm the first result."? No one, that's who. And if you do then, um, I guess you'll be very popular at sporting events and political conventions.
Point being, I think they're silly (the bios, not the people... well, not all of the people at least... moving on...) and when I have to do them I get irritable, antsy and easily distracted which doesn't help...
Sorry, I got sidetracked Googling "people who kick ass" just to make sure I wasn't the first result. That would have just been embarrassing since I made that crack about it earlier. So where was I?
Ah, screw it. These are a pain in the ass anyway.
Paul McCormack hates writing his own bio.
See? It just seems off. But on the other hand first person seems either unnaturally familiar or pre-packaged.
I'm not that interesting. And even if I were, I wouldn't tell you. No offense, I'm sure you're great and all, but who likes the guy who starts a conversation with "I'm pretty great," or "Google 'people who kick ass' and I'm the first result."? No one, that's who. And if you do then, um, I guess you'll be very popular at sporting events and political conventions.
Point being, I think they're silly (the bios, not the people... well, not all of the people at least... moving on...) and when I have to do them I get irritable, antsy and easily distracted which doesn't help...
Sorry, I got sidetracked Googling "people who kick ass" just to make sure I wasn't the first result. That would have just been embarrassing since I made that crack about it earlier. So where was I?
Ah, screw it. These are a pain in the ass anyway.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 12, 2014
I received this book through First Reads.
It isn’t easy to review This Languid Earth – and I mean that in an incredibly good way.
First, because of the way the story unfolds, almost anything to be said with regard to plot becomes riddled with spoilers - and this is not a book I want to spoil for you. There’s a reason why the blurb released for the novel is only one sentence long.
Second, although the cast of central characters is small, the themes are huge, immense, infinite. Imagine each “theme” as a spiral, each one not only spiraling in on itself, but also spiraling around and toward the others, finally interconnecting and creating new spirals and new connections.
Third, like the very best science fiction literature and TV series of the 1950’s and 1960’s, the story reveals itself slowly and carefully; never showing you anything past the curve upon which you are currently traveling. And, when you come to the end of that particular curve, you find another in front of you, and then another, and so on. Nothing in this book is extraneous; every detail contains within it the depth and eternity William Blake ascribed to a single hour of time. This somber, intricate, elegiac novel guides you deeper and deeper within itself until finally, you get to the core, to the truth.
Or do you?
In the movie “Something’s Gotta Give”, there is a conversation between Jack Nicholson’s and Diane Keaton’s characters, where he says to her: “I have always been honest with you. I have always told you some version of the truth”. To which she replies “The truth doesn’t have versions!”
But what if it did?
What if, contrary to what the disciple John said when he wrote “and the truth shall set you free”, the truth instead stripped away the comfortable trappings of your ignorance and gifted you with a reality, the starkness and heaviness for which you were totally unprepared?
What if, by doing so, you ended up questioning what reality really is? Or are there versions of that as well? And if there are versions of reality, can you make your own? Would you be happy if you could? Would knowing that you created it make it not “real”? Would that ruin it for you? What about dreams and memories? Are they real? Would you want them to be? Or would making them your reality make them seem, somehow, fake and, ultimately, disappointing?
How about love? That’s a huge theme with a whole bunch of spirals. What is love? When is it real? What happens when love is based on fantasy or born of discontent within one’s self? What happens when this kind of “fantasy love” devolves (as it must when it’s placed under stress) into obsession - which is all about satisfying one’s own needs while compromising or even sacrificing the well-being of others? Do the ends justify the means? Is that real Love? Or is that just real Awful?
This is just the tip of the philosophical and metaphysical iceberg in McCormack’s novel and he accomplishes all of this in a tight narrative structure that has no dross, no fat.
Ok, enough of the iceberg. Let me give you some sense of the story.
Lyle is just an ordinary guy. He has no particular talents or stimulating interests. Thus far, he has meandered through life, not becoming all that attached to anyone or anything. He goes to work every day, contributing the bare minimum. On his way home to his drab apartment, he stops for some fast food and spends the remainder of his evenings watching television, surfing the Internet and watching a little porn before going to bed. Sometimes he changes it up a little by going to the gym and engaging in some mild flirtation with a girl who walks the treadmill next to his.
That’s his routine until one day his life takes a turn for the unexpected when an attractive woman appears in the doorway of his work cubicle and lets him know they have met before and have shared many experiences and that he will understand all of this in time.
Nicola is a rather ordinary female (which she would take issue with) who has led a life of boredom tinged with a vague sense of disappointment over something not “quite right”. Something that didn’t happen as it should have. Until the day she decides to do some “surfing” of her own and embarks on a journey to bring life to her life and set things straight.
Hope…ah Hope. Well, she’s quite the enigma, the cipher. A small blonde 6-year-old clad in a dirty white dress who has a fascinating way of traveling within and between realities.
Moses, an itinerant musician, is another traveler with a backstory that you will want to read more than once. He is careful and circumspect, without friends, until one day he meets Irwin (aka Pastor Dave) who offers him a job playing the keyboard for the Pastor’s nightly radio show. For the first time in decades, Moses has a friend, and when Irwin asks him to share his life story, Moses, throwing caution to the wind, takes him up on it, presenting Irwin with a “truth” he may not have been prepared to see.
It is in how these beautifully drawn characters interact with each other, that McCormack weaves his intricate, cosmic themes. Each character has his/her own, distinct voice and the author literally adapts his writing style to express each one.
There’s a whole, whole lot going on in this novel. Alternate realities (not a spoiler – you learn this on page 1), time travel, shifting narratives…all these devices can be a huge recipe for disaster when an author can’t keep the structure tight and the prose lean and clear. I absolutely loved Kiese Laymon’s novel, Long Division, but I got so turned around in it, so disoriented, I had to take a pencil and paper in hand to keep it straight. You won’t have to do that with This Languid Earth. However, you do have to read slowly and carefully because, as I said, there is nothing extraneous in this book. Everything connects. But it’s all fascinating – there’s not one boring section. Sometimes Nicola can get a little pedantic, but I believe that’s part of her personality.
As you read, here are some suggestions I have for you:
Pay very close attention to Pastor Dave’s sermons because they are the forum for some of the novel’s largest themes and underpinnings. They are pretty entertaining as well as extremely insightful and thought provoking so this won’t be a hardship.
There are some very funny moments in the novel, don’t miss them. There’s a reference to G.W. Bush that is absolutely hilarious. I still laugh just thinking about it.
An explanation of the alternate realities and how universes are structured occurs midway through and it may seem long and a little confusing. If you start to feel that way, go back and read that section again. Or bookmark it so that you can refer back to it. It’s worth the extra review and makes a huge difference as the book proceeds. This book is practically all showing and not telling, so when you run across one of the few sections that “tell” more than “show”, pay attention.
The concept of Memory is a very huge theme so, when you read that word – and you will come across it throughout – slow down and take it in.
There is an elegant, very subtle symmetry in some of the metaphors that are used. I found them to be very beautiful. However, McCormack isn’t interested in populating a book with pretty sentences. We all have read books like that, particularly recently. It’s irritating in the extreme, almost as if a writer were writing in anticipation of being quoted in some lofty magazine. The beauty of the prose should develop organically. It should not feel as if it has been composed separately and then just artificially inserted into the story. The lovely, spare passages in this book come by their beauty naturally.
Here is a passage from late in the book, when Hope finds her way to a white Sea where time, realities and memories shift with the ebb and flow of the waves:
“Hope slipped off her shoes and ran up and down the shore, splashing through the time and Memories playfully. She lifted her dress to keep the hem from getting “wet” although she didn’t know if that was necessary or just habit…”. There was an odd sense of balance to everything. She knew how it all ended and it seemed appropriate in its own way. The wind had become a breeze blowing in off the great white sea of time and energy… She ended up just sitting, the waves licking up in between her toes, under the soles of her feet and licking her heels before scurrying back.
She remembered her tree and how it seemed to slowly swallow her up before. This was different. She didn’t feel as if she were a part of the ocean of Memories, hopes, dreams, time, space, matter and potential, but she did feel as if it were something she was meant to appreciate for its vastness and finality. She felt very small sitting on the shore in a way she imagined an ant felt small: that there were things so much larger than her, but that she was just the right size anyway.”
In preparation for this review, I reread the novel. If anything, it was even more satisfying and poignant than the first time. Small gems sprinkled earlier in the story took on even greater meaning and significance in light of what I learned in the first reading. I had greater awareness of, and appreciation for, all those little, subtle threads weaving their way throughout the story.
This is not a happy story, but then, some of the people we meet weren’t happy to begin with.
If you don’t possess the ability to be happy, if you don’t possess a richness of imagination, if your soul is lacking a sense of joy and wonder at creation in all of its strange forms and possibilities, if you can’t see a world in a grain of sand, what can you expect as you make your own life’s journey? Because…the one thing, the only thing, we take with us from place to place…is ourselves.
Initially, I was going to give This Languid Earth a 4-Star Rating; however, I still find myself thinking about these characters and the grand themes at work. I put myself in all of their places and wonder what I would have done, or thought or wanted or dreamed. I want to talk about this book with other readers. I want to ask myself and others those same questions: What is Truth? What is Love? What is Reality? What is Time? What is Memory? And how do our own inner strength, resiliency and conviction help shape the course of the answers?
That’s worth the 5th Star.
It isn’t easy to review This Languid Earth – and I mean that in an incredibly good way.
First, because of the way the story unfolds, almost anything to be said with regard to plot becomes riddled with spoilers - and this is not a book I want to spoil for you. There’s a reason why the blurb released for the novel is only one sentence long.
Second, although the cast of central characters is small, the themes are huge, immense, infinite. Imagine each “theme” as a spiral, each one not only spiraling in on itself, but also spiraling around and toward the others, finally interconnecting and creating new spirals and new connections.
Third, like the very best science fiction literature and TV series of the 1950’s and 1960’s, the story reveals itself slowly and carefully; never showing you anything past the curve upon which you are currently traveling. And, when you come to the end of that particular curve, you find another in front of you, and then another, and so on. Nothing in this book is extraneous; every detail contains within it the depth and eternity William Blake ascribed to a single hour of time. This somber, intricate, elegiac novel guides you deeper and deeper within itself until finally, you get to the core, to the truth.
Or do you?
In the movie “Something’s Gotta Give”, there is a conversation between Jack Nicholson’s and Diane Keaton’s characters, where he says to her: “I have always been honest with you. I have always told you some version of the truth”. To which she replies “The truth doesn’t have versions!”
But what if it did?
What if, contrary to what the disciple John said when he wrote “and the truth shall set you free”, the truth instead stripped away the comfortable trappings of your ignorance and gifted you with a reality, the starkness and heaviness for which you were totally unprepared?
What if, by doing so, you ended up questioning what reality really is? Or are there versions of that as well? And if there are versions of reality, can you make your own? Would you be happy if you could? Would knowing that you created it make it not “real”? Would that ruin it for you? What about dreams and memories? Are they real? Would you want them to be? Or would making them your reality make them seem, somehow, fake and, ultimately, disappointing?
How about love? That’s a huge theme with a whole bunch of spirals. What is love? When is it real? What happens when love is based on fantasy or born of discontent within one’s self? What happens when this kind of “fantasy love” devolves (as it must when it’s placed under stress) into obsession - which is all about satisfying one’s own needs while compromising or even sacrificing the well-being of others? Do the ends justify the means? Is that real Love? Or is that just real Awful?
This is just the tip of the philosophical and metaphysical iceberg in McCormack’s novel and he accomplishes all of this in a tight narrative structure that has no dross, no fat.
Ok, enough of the iceberg. Let me give you some sense of the story.
Lyle is just an ordinary guy. He has no particular talents or stimulating interests. Thus far, he has meandered through life, not becoming all that attached to anyone or anything. He goes to work every day, contributing the bare minimum. On his way home to his drab apartment, he stops for some fast food and spends the remainder of his evenings watching television, surfing the Internet and watching a little porn before going to bed. Sometimes he changes it up a little by going to the gym and engaging in some mild flirtation with a girl who walks the treadmill next to his.
That’s his routine until one day his life takes a turn for the unexpected when an attractive woman appears in the doorway of his work cubicle and lets him know they have met before and have shared many experiences and that he will understand all of this in time.
Nicola is a rather ordinary female (which she would take issue with) who has led a life of boredom tinged with a vague sense of disappointment over something not “quite right”. Something that didn’t happen as it should have. Until the day she decides to do some “surfing” of her own and embarks on a journey to bring life to her life and set things straight.
Hope…ah Hope. Well, she’s quite the enigma, the cipher. A small blonde 6-year-old clad in a dirty white dress who has a fascinating way of traveling within and between realities.
Moses, an itinerant musician, is another traveler with a backstory that you will want to read more than once. He is careful and circumspect, without friends, until one day he meets Irwin (aka Pastor Dave) who offers him a job playing the keyboard for the Pastor’s nightly radio show. For the first time in decades, Moses has a friend, and when Irwin asks him to share his life story, Moses, throwing caution to the wind, takes him up on it, presenting Irwin with a “truth” he may not have been prepared to see.
It is in how these beautifully drawn characters interact with each other, that McCormack weaves his intricate, cosmic themes. Each character has his/her own, distinct voice and the author literally adapts his writing style to express each one.
There’s a whole, whole lot going on in this novel. Alternate realities (not a spoiler – you learn this on page 1), time travel, shifting narratives…all these devices can be a huge recipe for disaster when an author can’t keep the structure tight and the prose lean and clear. I absolutely loved Kiese Laymon’s novel, Long Division, but I got so turned around in it, so disoriented, I had to take a pencil and paper in hand to keep it straight. You won’t have to do that with This Languid Earth. However, you do have to read slowly and carefully because, as I said, there is nothing extraneous in this book. Everything connects. But it’s all fascinating – there’s not one boring section. Sometimes Nicola can get a little pedantic, but I believe that’s part of her personality.
As you read, here are some suggestions I have for you:
Pay very close attention to Pastor Dave’s sermons because they are the forum for some of the novel’s largest themes and underpinnings. They are pretty entertaining as well as extremely insightful and thought provoking so this won’t be a hardship.
There are some very funny moments in the novel, don’t miss them. There’s a reference to G.W. Bush that is absolutely hilarious. I still laugh just thinking about it.
An explanation of the alternate realities and how universes are structured occurs midway through and it may seem long and a little confusing. If you start to feel that way, go back and read that section again. Or bookmark it so that you can refer back to it. It’s worth the extra review and makes a huge difference as the book proceeds. This book is practically all showing and not telling, so when you run across one of the few sections that “tell” more than “show”, pay attention.
The concept of Memory is a very huge theme so, when you read that word – and you will come across it throughout – slow down and take it in.
There is an elegant, very subtle symmetry in some of the metaphors that are used. I found them to be very beautiful. However, McCormack isn’t interested in populating a book with pretty sentences. We all have read books like that, particularly recently. It’s irritating in the extreme, almost as if a writer were writing in anticipation of being quoted in some lofty magazine. The beauty of the prose should develop organically. It should not feel as if it has been composed separately and then just artificially inserted into the story. The lovely, spare passages in this book come by their beauty naturally.
Here is a passage from late in the book, when Hope finds her way to a white Sea where time, realities and memories shift with the ebb and flow of the waves:
“Hope slipped off her shoes and ran up and down the shore, splashing through the time and Memories playfully. She lifted her dress to keep the hem from getting “wet” although she didn’t know if that was necessary or just habit…”. There was an odd sense of balance to everything. She knew how it all ended and it seemed appropriate in its own way. The wind had become a breeze blowing in off the great white sea of time and energy… She ended up just sitting, the waves licking up in between her toes, under the soles of her feet and licking her heels before scurrying back.
She remembered her tree and how it seemed to slowly swallow her up before. This was different. She didn’t feel as if she were a part of the ocean of Memories, hopes, dreams, time, space, matter and potential, but she did feel as if it were something she was meant to appreciate for its vastness and finality. She felt very small sitting on the shore in a way she imagined an ant felt small: that there were things so much larger than her, but that she was just the right size anyway.”
In preparation for this review, I reread the novel. If anything, it was even more satisfying and poignant than the first time. Small gems sprinkled earlier in the story took on even greater meaning and significance in light of what I learned in the first reading. I had greater awareness of, and appreciation for, all those little, subtle threads weaving their way throughout the story.
This is not a happy story, but then, some of the people we meet weren’t happy to begin with.
If you don’t possess the ability to be happy, if you don’t possess a richness of imagination, if your soul is lacking a sense of joy and wonder at creation in all of its strange forms and possibilities, if you can’t see a world in a grain of sand, what can you expect as you make your own life’s journey? Because…the one thing, the only thing, we take with us from place to place…is ourselves.
Initially, I was going to give This Languid Earth a 4-Star Rating; however, I still find myself thinking about these characters and the grand themes at work. I put myself in all of their places and wonder what I would have done, or thought or wanted or dreamed. I want to talk about this book with other readers. I want to ask myself and others those same questions: What is Truth? What is Love? What is Reality? What is Time? What is Memory? And how do our own inner strength, resiliency and conviction help shape the course of the answers?
That’s worth the 5th Star.
September 17, 2014
This Languid Earth by Paul McCormack is one of the most uniquely different books that I have read in a very long time.
It pulls you in from the very start and just when you think you know what is happening in the story line, a curve ball is thrown which leaves you confused yet wanting to know more.
The story encompasses the life of Lyle, an normal guy with a normal office job going through the motions of bachelorhood - work, eat, gym, watch TV, sleep and repeat. Until one day, Nicola (a woman from an alternate reality) appears and tells him that they have met before. But, the Lyle she remembers is from an entirely different reality, which complicates everything even further. Nicola and Lyle are meant to be together, regardless of which reality they are in and both work through many issues to stay connected across those realities.
Then there is Hope, the young girl who can surf from reality to reality and appear anywhere she wants to appear at any time. This initially "creeps out" Lyle, but as the story moves forward, Lyle gets used to her appearing out of nowhere. Besides, it is Hope who shows Nicola how to be in the same reality with Lyle. After a while, Nicola feels responsible for Hope and vows to keep the child with her across the realities.
The other two characters in the story, Moses and Irwin (Pastor Dave) at first seem insignificant to the story, but as I read and re-read the parts where their story comes alive, it became evident how important they both were to the entire plot and to the ending of the book. Pay close attention to Pastor Dave's sermons, they speak volumes ...
This Languid Earth was confusing and frustrating at times, but when that feeling overwhelmed me, I re-read the paragraphs to fully comprehend exactly what was happening with the characters and with the plot. I would suggest that other readers of this piece do the same - do not skim through the book, really read it (re-read it if needed) and you will not be disappointed.
I initially wanted to give this a 4-Star rating because there were a few parts I did not completely understand and had to re-read, but then I realized that this was not a book to "escape reality" or "curl up" with. It is a book that really makes you think about the "what if's" and whether there are alternate realities being lived just outside of our human reach.
I recommend it to those who love good science fiction as This Languid Earth is certainly that.
It pulls you in from the very start and just when you think you know what is happening in the story line, a curve ball is thrown which leaves you confused yet wanting to know more.
The story encompasses the life of Lyle, an normal guy with a normal office job going through the motions of bachelorhood - work, eat, gym, watch TV, sleep and repeat. Until one day, Nicola (a woman from an alternate reality) appears and tells him that they have met before. But, the Lyle she remembers is from an entirely different reality, which complicates everything even further. Nicola and Lyle are meant to be together, regardless of which reality they are in and both work through many issues to stay connected across those realities.
Then there is Hope, the young girl who can surf from reality to reality and appear anywhere she wants to appear at any time. This initially "creeps out" Lyle, but as the story moves forward, Lyle gets used to her appearing out of nowhere. Besides, it is Hope who shows Nicola how to be in the same reality with Lyle. After a while, Nicola feels responsible for Hope and vows to keep the child with her across the realities.
The other two characters in the story, Moses and Irwin (Pastor Dave) at first seem insignificant to the story, but as I read and re-read the parts where their story comes alive, it became evident how important they both were to the entire plot and to the ending of the book. Pay close attention to Pastor Dave's sermons, they speak volumes ...
This Languid Earth was confusing and frustrating at times, but when that feeling overwhelmed me, I re-read the paragraphs to fully comprehend exactly what was happening with the characters and with the plot. I would suggest that other readers of this piece do the same - do not skim through the book, really read it (re-read it if needed) and you will not be disappointed.
I initially wanted to give this a 4-Star rating because there were a few parts I did not completely understand and had to re-read, but then I realized that this was not a book to "escape reality" or "curl up" with. It is a book that really makes you think about the "what if's" and whether there are alternate realities being lived just outside of our human reach.
I recommend it to those who love good science fiction as This Languid Earth is certainly that.
August 19, 2014
I got This Languid Earth as a review copy in order to do a review in this space. I had never read Paul McCormack before; he found me through The Indie View. This Languid Earth is a book that struggles to find a genre. It starts as a paranormal book, then gradually becomes a romance, and then, quite suddenly, it becomes science fiction. I worry that it will struggle to draw the appeal of a wide audience because of this.
The book begins with an introduction to Lyle, a rather typical cubicle worker. We see Lyle throughout a boring day, a life that so many people lead and hate. I immediately thought of Edward Norton in the beginning of Fight Club, Ron Livingston from Office Space, or even Keanu Reeves from the Matrix, all before the story started. In our first introduction to Lyle he is visited by a ghost who calls herself Nicole and seems to know everything about him. We leave Lyle as he is tuning into the broadcast of a radio preacher. After a long sermon by the preacher, the first of many, we are introduced to Moses, the preacher's organist and are told how he met the preacher. Once this is done the book then transitions into a series of letters from Lyle and Moses to unknown parties.
As I'm sure you can see This Languid Earth jumps around a lot. I found it to be quite frustrating, it seemed that as soon as I started to become invested in one storyline I was thrown into another. Then, by the time I got back to the first one I had forgotten too much to care. I think the book could have benefitted from some restructuring. If the storylines intertwined they would be more likely to hold the reader's attention. Intertwining the stories might also help to grab the reader's attention in the beginning of the book. As it is I struggled through the first half. It wasn't until then that the conflict of the book was revealed.
The conflict itself was also a let down. The premise is really well thought out, and I like the eventual solution, I just think that it could have used some more attention. McCormack spent a lot of time on a love story that was only one aspect of a complex plot; he should have spent more on the conflict that this love story created. Getting focused on the love story aspect also messed up the pacing. I noticed a tendency for McCormack to get bogged down in details, for example spending two pages describing Lyle's entire apartment just for it to play no larger role in the later story, and I think this is what happened with the love story.
As Vonnegut says "Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action;" McCormack struggles with this. There are entire sections of This Languid Earth that seem to have no apparent purpose. Maybe showing Lyle having "the talk" with his father introduced us to a keystone of his character, but if it did I certainly didn't pick up on what it was. Many parts of This Languid Earth are a slog to get through, and I think cleaning them up would go a long way to improving the pace of the story.
For all of its faults I still enjoyed This Languid Earth. McCormack creates some very interesting concepts and deals with them in unique ways. I especially like the ending. This Languid Earth has a lot of potential, but I think it still needs some work before it can live up to its potential.
The book begins with an introduction to Lyle, a rather typical cubicle worker. We see Lyle throughout a boring day, a life that so many people lead and hate. I immediately thought of Edward Norton in the beginning of Fight Club, Ron Livingston from Office Space, or even Keanu Reeves from the Matrix, all before the story started. In our first introduction to Lyle he is visited by a ghost who calls herself Nicole and seems to know everything about him. We leave Lyle as he is tuning into the broadcast of a radio preacher. After a long sermon by the preacher, the first of many, we are introduced to Moses, the preacher's organist and are told how he met the preacher. Once this is done the book then transitions into a series of letters from Lyle and Moses to unknown parties.
As I'm sure you can see This Languid Earth jumps around a lot. I found it to be quite frustrating, it seemed that as soon as I started to become invested in one storyline I was thrown into another. Then, by the time I got back to the first one I had forgotten too much to care. I think the book could have benefitted from some restructuring. If the storylines intertwined they would be more likely to hold the reader's attention. Intertwining the stories might also help to grab the reader's attention in the beginning of the book. As it is I struggled through the first half. It wasn't until then that the conflict of the book was revealed.
The conflict itself was also a let down. The premise is really well thought out, and I like the eventual solution, I just think that it could have used some more attention. McCormack spent a lot of time on a love story that was only one aspect of a complex plot; he should have spent more on the conflict that this love story created. Getting focused on the love story aspect also messed up the pacing. I noticed a tendency for McCormack to get bogged down in details, for example spending two pages describing Lyle's entire apartment just for it to play no larger role in the later story, and I think this is what happened with the love story.
As Vonnegut says "Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action;" McCormack struggles with this. There are entire sections of This Languid Earth that seem to have no apparent purpose. Maybe showing Lyle having "the talk" with his father introduced us to a keystone of his character, but if it did I certainly didn't pick up on what it was. Many parts of This Languid Earth are a slog to get through, and I think cleaning them up would go a long way to improving the pace of the story.
For all of its faults I still enjoyed This Languid Earth. McCormack creates some very interesting concepts and deals with them in unique ways. I especially like the ending. This Languid Earth has a lot of potential, but I think it still needs some work before it can live up to its potential.
October 1, 2014
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
After finishing this book, I struggled a bit to put my thoughts into words. I skimmed some of the other reviews, good and bad, and found many of them already hit on the things I was feeling. The book did have potential, and I could tell there was a lot woven into this story. The problem was, there were some things that just didn't quite "click" to me. I was reading along, waiting for the "aha" moment. I didn't really ever get it. Can't say if that's the author's doing though, or mine.
This story had some elements that promised to make it interesting. There were interwoven stories, a plot that came together as you went, and some abstract thinking that had a slight psychological twist. When we hit the sci-fi, it borders somewhere between cool and odd, but it was unique, so it got points for that.
The spacing between sections threw me off, though. We stayed so long with one character, that by the time we got to the next, I had already stopped caring about them. When I was with Hope, I wanted to just stay with her. When we were with Moses, I felt dragged away from another story to be there. It's hard to invest in characters when you're torn away from them after such a long time. I didn't really want to listen to Pastor Dave's sermons, because there were other, more interesting things happening. Then I struggled to figure out what the author was trying to do with Hope's story. It's like getting partway through the movie and someone switches to another channel. You kind of want to finish the one you're in first.
I think the biggest downfall for me as a reader was the Narratives thing. I think if you get what's happening, the story will start coming together at that point. I tried. I really did. But I don't think my brain quite put together all the blocks in the right places. Because I couldn't really make sense of what was being explained, as I kept reading, I felt more confused, rather than less. As things accelerated, I was still trying to fix a proverbial flat tire.
That's not to say other people don't "get it". And that's not to say the whole book went over my head. There were a lot of good messages intermingled in this story. It was just a little hard to find, and a little hard to wait for.
I think this is a good book for people who are patient. You need to be patient with the characters, the plot, and the author. It's not going to just instantaneously make sense. And for some people, sadly, it may never make sense. But I'll leave that for you as a reader to figure out. It's not that there isn't a lot here to be found. I just may not be talented enough for the scavenger hunt.
After finishing this book, I struggled a bit to put my thoughts into words. I skimmed some of the other reviews, good and bad, and found many of them already hit on the things I was feeling. The book did have potential, and I could tell there was a lot woven into this story. The problem was, there were some things that just didn't quite "click" to me. I was reading along, waiting for the "aha" moment. I didn't really ever get it. Can't say if that's the author's doing though, or mine.
This story had some elements that promised to make it interesting. There were interwoven stories, a plot that came together as you went, and some abstract thinking that had a slight psychological twist. When we hit the sci-fi, it borders somewhere between cool and odd, but it was unique, so it got points for that.
The spacing between sections threw me off, though. We stayed so long with one character, that by the time we got to the next, I had already stopped caring about them. When I was with Hope, I wanted to just stay with her. When we were with Moses, I felt dragged away from another story to be there. It's hard to invest in characters when you're torn away from them after such a long time. I didn't really want to listen to Pastor Dave's sermons, because there were other, more interesting things happening. Then I struggled to figure out what the author was trying to do with Hope's story. It's like getting partway through the movie and someone switches to another channel. You kind of want to finish the one you're in first.
I think the biggest downfall for me as a reader was the Narratives thing. I think if you get what's happening, the story will start coming together at that point. I tried. I really did. But I don't think my brain quite put together all the blocks in the right places. Because I couldn't really make sense of what was being explained, as I kept reading, I felt more confused, rather than less. As things accelerated, I was still trying to fix a proverbial flat tire.
That's not to say other people don't "get it". And that's not to say the whole book went over my head. There were a lot of good messages intermingled in this story. It was just a little hard to find, and a little hard to wait for.
I think this is a good book for people who are patient. You need to be patient with the characters, the plot, and the author. It's not going to just instantaneously make sense. And for some people, sadly, it may never make sense. But I'll leave that for you as a reader to figure out. It's not that there isn't a lot here to be found. I just may not be talented enough for the scavenger hunt.
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