Note: Nearly all of these books have been featured on “Best Books of the Year” lists, and yet, I found all of them to be lacking in some fundamental way. The subtitle of this article could almost be “When Everyone Else Loves a Book that You Merely Like” but that wouldn’t fit on the Twitter link.
This is How You Lose Her…A staggering example of a book that I started out liking and eventually turned on. It’s a “novel in short stories” that revolves around Yunior, a Dominican playboy and all the women he blows it with. This book is funny, true, and more than a little repetitive. I started out laughing, and was constantly bowled over by how truthful it is (loved the narrator’s observations about dating a single mom who now wants to “take it slow”). Yet, the more it kept going, the more I started to feel boxed-in by the narrative and especially the narrator. The more this ethnocentric, ignorant lothario keeps prattling off all the Dominican women (he keeps referencing non-spanish women he dates, but most of them are not even given names and only referred to as “white girls” or some slang for black) he’s with, it just starts to really feel like a slog that repeats itself. I felt I wanted to escape more than I wanted more, but the book is only 213 pages. Grade: B
Sutton…This follows the story of Willie Sutton, an infamous bank robber I’ve never heard of. Apparently, he robbed banks during The Great Depression and the big theme of the book is how the banks have been out of control in cycles, but people just keep forgetting how bad they are during the good times. I was primed to like this book too, but it uses a curious framing device wherein Willie is telling his past to 1960’s reporters who are driving him around. It really took me out of the book, undercut the suspense, and broke up the momentum every time you really got involved in Willie’s past. If you drop the framing device, the book’s probably a B+, but as it stands…Grade: B-
The Round House…This novel is set on a Native American reservation in 1988. It’s told through the perspective of Joe, a 13-year-old boy whose mother is raped, and his quest for vengeance on the man who did it. It deals with an important topic (the book uses a terrifying statistic that nearly half of Native American women on reservations are raped, and 86 percent of the time it’s by men that don’t live on the reservations) and it always seems like it’s about to get really good, but the problem is that Louise Eldrich isn’t so much interested in telling a great, gripping narrative as she is in swamping us with mundane details about Native American life. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t love it…Grade: B
Live by Night…In some ways, the most successful of these books. Yet, also the most limited, and the one with the least ambition and curiosity into the human spirit. It’s about a bootlegger who rises up through the Boston mafia, does a prison stretch, goes to Tampa, and eventually becomes a king down there. The book doesn’t really get gripping until the lead character arrives in Tampa and has run-ins with Cuban revolutionaries, an evangelical star, and (most interesting) a gang war with the KKK, who would threaten bombings if a business didn’t pay protection money. Live by Night is always interesting, but it’s over long and has too many side-tangents to keep it from greatness. Plus, I seriously hated the “shocking” ending. It’s the only one of these books with a down-ending, and it’s the only one I didn’t want to end that way. Grade: B
Back to Blood…Only Tom Wolfe could write a 704 page novel that has an ending so abrupt you feel cheated when it’s over. This thing is all about Miami, the Cuban cops, the black gangs, the shady Russian art collectors, and a Haitian professor trying to keep his son out of the thug life and wanting his light-skinned daughter to pass for French. Wolfe creates a fascinating landscape, but inexplicably drops characters for no good reason. Most notably, the Haitian professor who is given fifty great pages and then only seen one other time in the book for a very brief encounter, while being denied any ending whatsoever. Never mind that the book is an almost inexcusable 700 pages, many of those pages are taken up by a single paragraph and some of the chapters take up nearly 50 pages. It’s not an easy read, and I can’t say I fully recommend it. I’m glad I read this book, but, knowing how it ends and the general feeling that it promises an epic, panoramic view of the city but keeps getting lost in digressions only Wolfe might find interesting, I can’t say I would read it if I had it to do over again. Grade: B-
I am going to read The round house, you did a good job writing reviews. You make me want to read more, and thanks.