Today was devoted to driving from Kolda to Tambacounda, along another bumpy road (actually the same bumpy road as yesterday), badly in need of repair. Back at the same hotel as last week. The woman at the desk recognized me, asked about the bike boys, and even gave me the same room. Kinda nice, actually, to be back somewhere somewhat familiar.
Since I don't have any new observations about Senegal, today's post will be a book review. I managed to read a little bit during first part of the ride. I've been trying to get through The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud, because it came highly recommended by a dear friend whose judgment I trust. It's about three Brown alumni in their thirties, living in New York, struggling with not living up to the high expectations they have for themselves.
Unfortunately, the three main characters—and all of the people around them—are uniformly unsympathetic. Their existential angst is not so much about how they can make the most of the many advantages they were born with, but about why they are not as successful and famous as they ought to be, given their obvious superiority. At least that's how it plays out to me, up to page 173, when I decided I didn't want to spend any more time with these self-absorbed, superior people.
Messud's writing doesn't do much for me either, filled as it is with endless strings of dependent clauses, seemingly inserted to display her own intelligence and deftness with a keyboard, or that of her characters—for whom a clever turn of phrase or surprising idea is more important than a heart—so that by the end of many sentences I couldn't quite remember the beginning, and didn't really care to.
I think I'll go back to Inheritance of Loss or Life of Pi.
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2 comments:
I plodded through The Emperor's Children last month, and found it to be (despite the critical accolades) one of the most overwritten and self-absorbed pieces of "literary fiction I've come across in a long time.
You're dead on about everyone being unsympathetic. While I don't mind an unsympathetic character or two, an entire novel packed with them was off-putting.
Steven King nailed it on the head in a "New York Times" piece a couple months ago ...
"These stories felt show-offy rather than entertaining, self-important rather than interesting, guarded and self-conscious rather than gloriously open, and worst of all, written for editors and teachers rather than for readers."
Glad to hear I'm in good company. I think I'll leave my copy here in Tambacounda.
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