Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Another Abandoned Book

Heidi Julavits, The Uses of Enchantment (linking to Amazon because I'm relieved to see I'm not the only one).

About 60 pages in, I realized that the characters were unpleasant, the circumstances were unbelievable, the psychiatrist who apparently delivers a significant piece of the narrative was annoying, and the writing was no great shakes either ("abrased"? "wicker-thin"? how thin is a wicker? and woe betide the copy editor who let "Each had a water glass in their laps" slip by).

(Is it possible, after the snark essay, to just say that Heidi Julavits wrote a book I didn't like, and leave it at that?)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I made myself finish it...it wasn't worth the time. I closed it and sat shaking my head wondering what the hell it was about and annoyed as hell with much of the language use.

Phantom Scribbler said...

I slogged through the snark essay, and, honestly, that was enough for me. It's hard enough work restraining my inner Dororthy Parker even without such perfect targets.

Anonymous said...

THANK YOU! I should know better than to think I'll like any book recommended by Dave Eggers, however much I loved his first book.