I have, after 100 pages, decided to give this book a long rest. I don't know, I just thought it was all a bit too much "tell not show". I heard Meg Wolitzer discussing the novel on BBC Radio 4's Book Club and I thought I'd give it a go; it sounded pretty compelling.
The first 20 pages or so give character descriptions of teenagers at a summer camp in the 70s. It's a bit like one of those US teen movies where the camera sweeps round a high school campus showing the 'jock', the 'mean girls', the 'nerds' etc. It does very little else and I found the characters to be a little bit 2D and obvious.
As the novel progresses, we there hear of all the early 80s anxieties of quite privileged, white city types who wanted to become actors but then became really boring things. There is a very awkward sex scene which was about as erotic as a dishcloth and then more of the same jumping between characters and time frames.
Perhaps I wasn't in the mood. Perhaps I need to revisit it in a better frame of mind but I couldn't stand it any more. Like a sort of bad copy of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. Perhaps later.
Comments