Just finished The Shipping News, by E Annie Proulx. I saw the movie before I read the book so I didn't know what to expect. For some reason it feels wrong to say you liked a Proulx book, because her style is so very unlikeable. She finds the ugliest part of any given situation and highlights it as much as possible, with no apology or regret. The people are fat and disgusting, hot stinky breath covers everything, sex is not so much sex as undisguised rutting and the children are all annoying brats. That is why when she ends the novel with a positive idea - that love does not require misery or pain, but slips in quietly while you're worrying about something else - it gives it even more weight.
Accordion Crimes has been sitting on my bookshelf for a while now, maybe I'll pick it up when I'm done with Virginia Woolf. Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? Me! Me! Me!
PATTOTE - Better living through writers who acknowledge the existence of gay cowboys.
1 comment:
All children ARE annoying brats.
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