Honestly. Just so ridiculous. Nina Simons’ Mother Daughter Murder Night imagine a grandmother on chemo, a working mom and a teenage girl as the intrepid detectives that will solve a murder in a sleepy seaside town. Because the well qualified female police officer is bossed around by her mansplaining partner and so can’t pursue the leads she know she should? And because somehow the crew of ill-qualified women are just able to find key evidence, interview witnesses and locate unexpected This and That. Were it not for the fact that it was an audiobook and I was batch cooking endless soups (#winteriscoming) and couldn’t be bothered to turn it off, I would have absolutely thrown it out a window. Do not bother! Despite how catchy the back of the book makes it sound or how tempted you are by Strong Women Doing Things.
Category Archives: Worst Books
The Ministry of Time: Such a great premise and yet
Kaliane Bradley’s Ministry of Time promises to be such a great read from the plot description. It’s the near future and things are Not Good politically or environmentally, but Britain has discovered time travel. The appointed Ministry of Time is responsible for bringing back a sampling of historical figures as an experiment to see how they handle the journey through time (like does it destroy their bodies or minds?). Each figure is assigned a ‘bridge’ – a contemporary person who will be their translator for the present and who will live with them for the year helping them understand all the intervening years and discoveries since their historical time (as well as their own sense of self and identity displaced by centuries). Our protagonist is one such bridge, paired with a British naval officer from the lost Franklin expedition. Their romance is at once inevitable and a slow burn.
There are attempts to make the book political – with nods to contemporary crises of refugees, climate wars and deteriorating democracy. But most of this gets lost in the weave of trying to literally understand what is happening in the plot of the novel where the story gets muddled with explanation of time travel (or failed explanations), too much cloak and dagger spy missions where the reader is (I guess) meant to understand in the limited narration way of our protagonist but is – at least I was – just confused about what is going on and why. It culminates in a climax where I remain entirely unsure what happened in terms of basic plot points, nevermind if it was a satisfying ending for the affective threads that had been – at least at first – so carefully stitched.
So sure – if you happen to be very focused and willing to take notes and maybe to just give up on the idea that there’s understandable world building to be had then maybe it’s enjoyable? At the very least it’s an enjoyable first 70 pages as you’re absorbed in the novelty of the plot. And then it’s just… not.
Filed under Book I'll Forget I Read, Fiction, Worst Books
The Women: I Just Knew It
(Spoilers ahead) Kristin Hannah’s The Women looked like a book I would not like. But so many best of lists promised greatness (and marketers did their best with prominently featured placement on shelves at book stores) and so I went in for it. And I should know enough of what I like now to have known better. Alas. Here we are 500 pages later and this will not be a popular post because everyone else on the internet loves this book, so okay, hate me and move on.
Why do they like it? Well as historical fiction mashed with romance it has genre going for it. With a plucky heroine in Frankie McGrath who follows a character arc we just know – we just know – from the outset is going to be fine in the end despite all the Trials and Tribulations we have character going for it. Add in the unbeatable combination of the untold story of American women in the Vietnam War with an almost-critical-but-never-quite-unpatriotic view on the American role and we have plot and theme.
And sure. There’s appreciation for the centralizing – from the boldness of the tile allllll the way through – of the role of women in the war and the way their experience after the war was forgotten, marginalized or dismissed. And how women, don’t you know, just stick together and are there for one another. And there’s something to be said for the propulsive first part that has Frankie in Vietnam with plot and character developments fast and fierce.
But from the moment Jamie’s near-dead body gets on the plane I knew. I just knew there was no way this book was ending with anything short of a miraculous resolution where Frankie and Jamie would end up together and ride off into the sunset. And while the sunset doesn’t quite materialize, the end is exactly that – a triumphant tying up of all loose threads into something more than a bow, something like an artistic arrangement where every string has become a thing of beauty.
I don’t know. Is it wrong to dislike a book for being so obviously saccharine? For being so outrageously committed to making sure Everything Works Out? When – and here’s an obvious point – for most in the Vietnam War everything did not work out.
Better and other complaints could be in the boring writing that is straightforwardly narrative with little to get excited about. Or the wooden secondary characters that are only present to do their specific secondary character thing – an emotionally dead mother, a traditional father, a consistent and steadfast best friend, a rakish boyfriend, an honourable fiancé – YAWN – with nary a complexity to their name. Or that the politics of the book is bland and ultimately committed to American exceptionalism.
So learn from my mistakes. Do not be drawn in by the prominent placement on any table or any best of list. This is one to skip.
Filed under American literature, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Worst Books
The Bright Sword: It’s No Mists of Avalon
I probably read The Mists of Avalon 26 times when I was a teenager. Between it and Gone With the Wind its hard to say which I read more, but in both I found something of the epic (and the romance). (While I haven’t tried to reread The Mists of Avalon, I did attempt to read GWTW again in my twenties and was aghast at the racism and had to stop. A post for another time is the particular feeling of re-reading a book from childhood only to discover you have so changed).
So when I saw the description of Lev Grossman’s The Bright Sword as an epic to rival that of The Mists, I eagerly picked it up – undaunted or swayed by the mighty thousand pages. And I did enjoy the first 700 enough that I kept going. But eventually the slog got me. The epic quest too much for this failed knight. The weight of the journey too much to bear. Etc repeat.
Continue readingFiled under Book I'll Forget I Read, Worst Books
Literary Vice 