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Choosing a book for March 2013
By New York Revi… · 8 posts · 78 views
last updated Mar 02, 2013 09:53AM
Choosing a book for August 2013
By New York Revi… · 33 posts · 86 views
last updated Aug 13, 2013 08:00PM
What Members Thought
Witty, meandering, pithy, plotless, smart, absurd, like a child of Joan Didion and David Markson.
Review forthcoming!
Sometimes my rating system is a little idiosyncratic. Some books that I've given more stars to are not as ambitious as this one. This book suffers a little by being rated against my own expectation of it, and since I probably heard about it first more than twenty years ago, that's a long time for expectation to build.
I'm currently reading it with others in the NYRB book club here, and the range of reaction is fairly broad. Written as a series of vignettes, the novel, if that's what it really is ...more
I'm currently reading it with others in the NYRB book club here, and the range of reaction is fairly broad. Written as a series of vignettes, the novel, if that's what it really is ...more
First published in 1976, this book is, in many ways, very c1970. There are no computers and cell phones and so many of what we consider vital parts of everyday life.
It is also experimental. The narrator is one Jenn Fain, but there is no story. This is snippets of her memories, most of which go exactly nowhere. There is no plot, no storyline, no cast of characters. It reminds of of flash fiction, Pilgrimage by Dorothy Richardson (which has more plot but is also very everyday dull), and Rachel Cus ...more
It is also experimental. The narrator is one Jenn Fain, but there is no story. This is snippets of her memories, most of which go exactly nowhere. There is no plot, no storyline, no cast of characters. It reminds of of flash fiction, Pilgrimage by Dorothy Richardson (which has more plot but is also very everyday dull), and Rachel Cus ...more
Much of it reads like a stand-up routine composed by Joan Didion. The same kind of inert “irony” that does little more than take note of a minor disorder in an eccentric individual and hypostasize it into a Statement on modern life.
Sep 26, 2013
Seán
rated it
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review of another edition
Shelves:
brick-city-library,
2013
Dec 13, 2013
Mark
marked it as to-read
Oct 28, 2018
Rachel
marked it as to-read
Jul 20, 2019
Anthony
marked it as to-read
Nov 30, 2020
Rena
marked it as to-read
