This one is my mother's fault. She asked if I'd read it, said she thought it was the kind of book I would read, maybe even know the author (I don't). I saw it in the bookstore, read a few pages, and it seemed fine. I saw it on the shelf during a ten-minute dash to the library and grabbed it.
Big mistake.
This is a romance/academia novel. Both the romance (Tracy has sworn off men, meets perfect man, loses perfect man after discovering he's not perfect, gets back together with perfect man resolving to work on imperfection issues, and sets off to live happily ever after) and the academia (will Tracy get tenure? why is her mean colleague so mean? what about the crazy graduate student? how many bon mots can her urbane gay colleague toss off) are completely predictable (OK, not completely: I wasn't sure what would happen with the mean colleague and the crazy graduate student, which is why I skimmed to the end instead of quitting, but what happened was both predictable and inadequate). Literary observations are sprinkled throughout, and the romance and academia are sutured together with a thesis about the value of literature about happiness (i.e. "Tolstoy lied"), but that's not so convincing either.
The Washington Post characterizes Tolstoy Lied as, essentially, chick lit with a veneer of big ideas. The San Francisco Chronicle thought it was a beautifully-written contemporary love story. I'm afraid I have to align myself with the Post. The worst part? This book was just boring.
3 comments:
Thank goodness you read it so I don't have to - a sassy "up for tenure" novel is really more than I can bear.
Ms. Kadish has a wonderful command of the English language, very good character developement, and can hold her story line well.
However,I found this work a little tedious. One review I read referred to its humor. I must have missed it unless it was that chuckle or two I-can't-remember-where in the book.
Seems like any thing picked up at random written in this last decade has to have the gratuitous frustrated Christian, gay guy, self-depreciating, or self-analyzing, female.
Enough already.
The last thing you want to hear about a book claiming Tolstoy lied is that it's boring.
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