The Sadness - Benjamin Rybeck - 2.5 stars rounded up

[Booknblues]

“So you just fetishize misery and bleakness and all that.” “I do not. The Sadness is redemptive, because at least the director believes in the importance of struggling. But you lack The Sadness. Land Without Water is bleak because it presents the world as a horrible place but provides no sense of anything beyond the misery.”

Does this sound up your alley, once several years ago, I thought it was mine and placed in on my tbr, because of some now forgotten great review. The Sadness is not without merits; it has that cool evocative feel that many Noir books do; the language is often times beautiful; the characters are arresting and while you may not care for them you cover your eyes and peek out to see what will happen to them.

Kelly, lost and groundless, nearing 30 heads back to her ghosts in Portland, Maine to reconnect to the father she never really knew and instead she connects with her twin brother, Max, who we all have seen in a long trench coat shuffling down the street avoiding eye contact and talking to himself. He only cares about film, he is lost in a world of his making and it isn't very safe.

Now Kelly, well here is the thing about Kelly:

As they spoke, she eyed the book on his desk: The Man Without Qualities, it was called—something DeJong was reading for his own studies, he told her. The title lodged itself in her mind. What did it mean to be without qualities? And what, exactly, were qualities anyway? Dad, Mom, Max—they all had qualities, didn’t they? Negative qualities, perhaps, but qualities all the same. But what about Kelly? If asked to describe her, what would her friends say? Oh, Kelly? Well, Kelly… let’s just say she’s a woman without qualities.

Kelly's long dead mother has always told her she needs to take care of Max and when he picks up a sizeable rock and bashes himself in the face with it repeatedly, she realizes that this is true, but is she up to the task?

And did I say there is a lost woman, who Max is trying to find? It is a mystery of sorts and the way the book is going can it possibly turn out well?

One last word of advice, don't let a good review inveigle you into reading a book.