The book opens with a car driving off of a bridge. Witnesses claim it was suicide but the family pushes to claim it was an accident. A newspaper clipping makes it clear that the family is prominent and above reproach. Why would the driver commit suicide?
This book is actually three intertwined stories, an old woman named Iris tells about her current life. She also is writing her memoirs, focusing on her childhood and the events that led up to the car accident. We learn that Iris's life is solitary and that she's been abandoned by her family.
The third story is actually a different novel, based on an affair between a higher society woman a man on the run. The man is writing a pulp science fiction story to entertain her. This is by far the most interesting part of the book. Unfortunately, it's also the smallest.
This book won the Man Booker Prize in 2000 and Time named it one of the top 100 novels of the last 80 years (or whatever their gimmick was). Holy cats is it overrated! The story is dull, the characters are unlikeable, and the big secrets of the book aren't important enough that you'll care about them.
Iris as a child is unable to do anything but sneer at events around her. Iris as an adult can do nothing but sneer at the past. The 'bad guys' are made of cardboard. The 'good guys' are made of cotton candy. I kept reading and waiting to see what the big deal was and it never happened.
Most annoying for me, the book isn't even well written. About once a chapter you get a construction like this: "of course she knew it would happen. (paragraph break) It never happened." When you keep relying on this trick it quickly becomes dull and signals the reader not to trust the story.
This is the type of book that makes regular people think that book critics are full of it. Don't make the mistake I made. Never pick it up.
1 comment:
I remembered seeing this at your house and wondering who was reading it. I was terribly underwhelmed by this book too. In fact I have mostly discarded it from my memory (until reading your review). I don't know why it got so much attention. I think it sat on my bookshelf for over 5 years before I actually read it.
Meh.
Post a Comment