I stayed up past midnight to finish, exhilarated by the prose, and excited about every exquisite perfect detail, and eager for the perceptions and theI stayed up past midnight to finish, exhilarated by the prose, and excited about every exquisite perfect detail, and eager for the perceptions and the recognitions that came tumbling along on every page...and now I'm done, and I just don't know. I don't think I'm going to remember this in a year. The tiny paragraphs of insight, one after another, remind me a little too much of Twitter. "Good Twitter," but still.
Reading this novel was like watching a gentle rain falling on a pond....more
This novel demands a level of patience to be fully appreciated. The author lingers over minor characters and their stories even when these aren't direThis novel demands a level of patience to be fully appreciated. The author lingers over minor characters and their stories even when these aren't directly significant to the main story. I would say the novel was understated to a fault, but as I persevered, the understatement magically began to feel both revelatory and heartbreaking. It's an ensemble story, told from many points of view, where even the most tangential characters get to tell their tales, and where the storytelling style itself reflects the individuality and worthiness of each human being....more
Say, Say, Say is a huge and consequential story that is told in a very small space. The particulars contain multitudes. I was overwhelmed by the way tSay, Say, Say is a huge and consequential story that is told in a very small space. The particulars contain multitudes. I was overwhelmed by the way this slender novel completely and truthfully honors some of the most difficult relationships in our human experience. A core relationship portrayed here is between a loving husband and a wife who suffers from brain damage and no longer recognizes him. Another relationship--so common in our aging culture, and yet almost never the subject of our fiction-- is the relationship between paid caregiver and the disabled woman she cares for--the novel portrays so humanely and so completely the way a caregiver is expected to honestly care for the person in their charge...but not to care too much, because the caregiver can never forget, after all, that she's the hired help.
I'm respectful of the confidence Lila Savage exhibits here, to believe in her story, and to tell it full, and to trust that her small canvas can tell such a big, true story about the human condition.
Another aspect of the novel that I admire very much is the amount of interior monologue that Savage permits herself to write here. There are pages and pages of the caregiver's interior struggles, beautifully rendered. A caring person, but young and unsure of her role, she tries to honor the woman she has been hired to keep clean and safe, and she also tries to respect and lend support to the woman's husband, even as she is constantly worrying about whether she is overstepping her role.
I think of Bad Marie by Marcy Dermansky as a near-perfect book, and the only reason I didn't write "a perfect book" is because it's more perfect than I think of Bad Marie by Marcy Dermansky as a near-perfect book, and the only reason I didn't write "a perfect book" is because it's more perfect than perfect--like all the most perfect of things, it has a fatal flaw or two to keep it interesting.
And then came The Red Car which was almost, almost as near-perfect as Bad Marie.
So it could be just by comparison that I thought this book was just "very good." After two novels that were wrenchingly feminist in their own, unique, fascinating, and strangely dysfunctional way, this novel seemed to land in a less strange and less marvelous country, to my mind....more
People compare Nathan Englander to Philip Roth and it's a fair comparison only in that they are both Jewish and they both have a talent for writing scPeople compare Nathan Englander to Philip Roth and it's a fair comparison only in that they are both Jewish and they both have a talent for writing scenes that include masturbation.
But Roth lived at a time when he felt his goals included defining for his readers what it meant to be a secular American Jew--with the emphasis on "American." His characters are Jewish, yes, but in a mostly secular way, where the obligation and identity are sublimated, and where their greater goal as characters is to be as mainstream-American as possible. Roth lived through a time when redlining was still an open secret, and when people went out of their way to not hire Jews, or allow them in their clubs; his novels worked, on one level, to unmask the absurdity that Jewish Americans were different from any other Americans.
Englander is a couple of generations younger than Roth. The goal of his Jewish characters feels different. They are thinking about the downside of being as secular and as assimilated as possible. Englander makes his characters think more deeply about their faith than Roth does. They think about the weight of obligation they have to remain Jews, and to carry forward faith traditions intact from one generation to the next.
In kaddish.com the protagonist, Larry, seems at first as if he has wandered out of a Roth novel. He has left his traditions behind. He is an atheist and a sensualist. When his father dies he refuses to take on the obligation that would fall on him traditionally, were he observant, of reciting the Kaddish. The refusal catapults him into a very different direction for his life than what he'd planned.
Most of the novel is an exploration of what it might be like for an American Jew to turn away from mainstream American life and to return to an Orthodox way of life. And it is like nothing Roth ever wrote, because from about page 45 on it immerses the reader in the rhythms of Orthodox-Jewish traditions, where the characters are people of deep faith, who believe, for instance, that their prayers have consequences in the afterlife, and who observe traditions with, well, religious intensity.
There is a thread of the surreal here that reminds me of Englander's first story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, and there is also a touch of the comic, but on the whole I experienced the novel as a serious reflection on what it means to be an observant Jew in the modern world....more
After a promising beginning this novel quickly began to feel contrived to me, and then pointless. People die, or walk off into the snow, or show up unAfter a promising beginning this novel quickly began to feel contrived to me, and then pointless. People die, or walk off into the snow, or show up unexpectedly, or disappear unexpectedly, all in service to move the protagonist to some other location, rather than for any organic reason. The final denouement between protagonist and his wan and inexplicably conflicted benefactor ends with the protagonist reaching the same conclusions that he had reached already three times before in the novel.
A peripatetic novel works better for me when it reveals a character who is clearly learning and growing from his life experiences. In the case of this novel it felt like Washington Black was the same person in the beginning as he was the end, in spite of his travels and travails.
So: not for me. Two stars for some vivid period details....more
This novel rings brilliant changes on topics such as vomit--"The stew-like puddle stank beside the mattress"--and it does a wonderful job of representThis novel rings brilliant changes on topics such as vomit--"The stew-like puddle stank beside the mattress"--and it does a wonderful job of representing characters whose main way of spending their lives is to grow stupefied together on booze or drugs or occasionally sex. All the characters speak in a witty-gritty way that I admire, but it almost felt as if Robinson is so good at all of the above--especially good at drunken dialog, for instance, or of writing characters who make stupid choices, or writing scenes that ignite with a sudden flash of violence--that it got to be too much for me, where it was a story that moved in circles rather than forward. I'm still a big fan but I felt Robinson's writing strengths eventually overwhelmed the actual story....more
The second time around for me on this novel--i wanted to check in, and see how I feel about it, since I loved The Keep so much.
With this novel, thougThe second time around for me on this novel--i wanted to check in, and see how I feel about it, since I loved The Keep so much.
With this novel, though, as I read along, I kept thinking: "great writing, pointless story."
Here is when that word "pointless" comes into my head, when reading: it's when there is no discernible core of self-reflection in the novel. No thesis, you might say.
The characters here are like pinballs. Life is something that happens to them.
I don't necessarily need redemption in my novels, or active characters, but I need something. Even if "something" is just a character who becomes self-aware of her/his own helplessness to act--whether ironically or optimistically or tragically self-aware--that's enough.
As it is I didn't know why I was reading this novel....more
An unnerving read that pulls the reader in nearly as many uncomfortable directions as it does its characters.
The main narrator has a glib and superfiAn unnerving read that pulls the reader in nearly as many uncomfortable directions as it does its characters.
The main narrator has a glib and superficial way of describing events, where the very dark currents of the novel are camouflaged for a time, only slipping into view intermittently. The foreshadowing is so subtle that it can be mistaken for misdirection, but it was the perfect way to disarm me in the beginning, and to prevent me from accurately predicting what was in store for me.
Music doesn't behave as it should in the novel. This thematic leitmotif--of music not quite behaving as it should--grows more insistent as the book progresses. Music can be soul-felt and soul-revealing, a cry from the past that connects with the present in sometimes-uncanny ways; but the power of music to connect this way, across time, is perverted by the main characters, who are more interested in collecting original 78's than they are in understanding the music or appreciating the artists who created it.
The last pages of the novel are heartbreaking and unexpected. Somehow this UK author of Kashmiri and British ancestry has written a scathing indictment of racism in America, approaching the topic in such an oblique way in the beginning that I was not prepared for the message when it came, and was not able to equivocate or hide from it. ...more
I didn't like the story very much. What I loved though was the feeling of being in the presence of a masterful and intelligent storyteller. The languaI didn't like the story very much. What I loved though was the feeling of being in the presence of a masterful and intelligent storyteller. The language isn't just beautiful--it's also full of insight, where it surprises sentence by sentence. ...more