March 11, 2025 · 4:56 pm

The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus: Not Memorable, but Also Fine

I read Emma Knight’s The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus in nearly one sitting, which is a good thing because the characters are so pleasant as to be extremely forgettable, and the plot – which couched as mystery/romance/wealthy-people-doing-rich-things should have been captivating – was slow to engage.

(On the forgettable characters: the first 20 odd pages were almost impossible for me to sort out as characters get introduced every six sentences, each with something (apparently) unique for the reader to try to latch on to, but let me tell you, just telling me a character is ‘quirky’ does not a memorable character make. So either make yourself a little chart or trust me that it really doesn’t matter if you know who Fergus or Charlie are because they are both unimportant and underdeveloped).

Our protagonist, Pen, is tackling a few things: what happened that ruptured her parents’ marriage? Is sex really all that people say it is (and when should you have it? with who? for what reason?)? what ties families together if not only blood?

Mostly these questions turn out to have fairly straightforward and boring answers: parents marriage: infidelity (isn’t it always); sex: it depends and whatever you want to do or not do is great as long as you’re consenting and choosing; family: family can be about blood relationships, but that is always an insufficient condition for Family, and family doesn’t have to be about blood relationships. There’s a vehn diagram in there for chosen family for sure.

The fun parts are descriptions of the big Scottish estate where most of the plot unfolds. Lots of misty walks through overgrown gardens.

And the best part for me were the moments where friendship is (lightly) explored. Pen’s best friend Alice is with her and has been her best friend since forever. This kind of friendship is held up as some kind of unassailable fortress of knowing-and-being-known. As if the sheer length of time they have been friends is proof of the power of that trust. And here I quibble. I do dearly love the friends I have been friends with for a long, long time (I see you S. and C. and J. and J.) and yes, there’s something to be said for a person who has chosen you to be around for years and years (something quite different from a sibling who often has no choice or a partner who chooses you for a different kind of love and usually well after your identity has solidified). But Pen and Alice seem to think that length of friendship alone is sufficient justification for depth. And maybe that’s true? I don’t know, I’m not sure it is, but perhaps the real complaint is that the book makes no effort to complicate or question this – instead just: Old Friends Always Friends.

Anyway, I wouldn’t bother with this one, but you do you.

1 Comment

Filed under Bestseller, Book I'll Forget I Read, Fiction

Tagged as , , , , , ,

February 24, 2025 · 3:09 am

The Wren, the Wren: It might be brilliant; it might be boring

Honestly? I’m not sure. There were moments reading Anne Enright’s The Wren, the Wren that I was convinced it was genius. Sublime writing that catches you and holds you. Simple thematic question – what do we owe our inheritance, what do we blame the fathers and men. Rich, rich, imagery and poetry and playful form.

And then moments where I just didn’t care very much what happened to the characters, or couldn’t remember who a character was talking to or why, or whether an image was meant to be Significant or whether it was just there to prove the great writing.

I could let it percolate another few days and maybe I’d be clearer. But I think if I do the likelihood I forget the book entirely is high. There’s just not much there to hang on to; instead, a lot of imagery, a lot of certainty it is Very Beautiful Writing.

So sure – it won the Booker, and – as I Keep On Saying – it’s quite beautiful. And there are scenes I think might haunt me. But would I recommend it? Goddddd. I just don’t know.

Leave a comment

Filed under Booker Prize, Fiction

Tagged as , , ,

February 24, 2025 · 3:02 am

Long Island: Bets on the ending

Put Colm Tóibín’s Long Island in your library cart and you won’t be disappointed when it (eventually) makes it to you (I say eventually because inevitably it will have a wait list as everyone wants to read this one).

*many spoilers ahead*

It’s probably because I’d just finished the Elizabeth Strout, but the style of this one read as similar. Direct, descriptive of character’s thoughts, weighted moments that are not Literary – just excellent, and the interweaving of characters from previous works. Pressed I’d say I liked Strout better, but it would be hard pressed.

Long Island opens with a knock at the door. Eilis opens it to learn that her husband, Tony, has been having an affair. The woman he’s been sleeping with is pregnant, and her husband is at the door to explain that when the baby is born he will be dropping it off with Tony. And for some reason Tony thinks Eilis should go along with this plan. All of Tony’s family seems to think the same. Eilis is not so keen.

So off she goes (home?) to Ireland, bringing her grown children with her. With the unanswered question of whether she’ll return, and if she does return, if she’ll stay with Tony. She makes it seem like it’s his choice – like if he takes in the baby she won’t, and if he doesn’t, she will – but the reader knows (even if Eilis doesn’t) that this will always be her choice. Tony is not a choice maker.

Complications abound when she returns to Ireland. Her mother’s ailing health. Her former flame, Jim Farrel – now engaged to her best friend (but secretly!). Her adult children and what they want and expect from her.

How she can make a choice when so many people Expect So Much of her. What choices are hers, in the end. Well, that is the ending, and it’s a cliff hanger, so buckle up your book club and let everyone have their say.

For me? I want Eilis and Jim together on Long Island. And I want it to be a world where what Eilis wants she can choose. Want, we know, isn’t always get.

Delightful, great writing, absorbing (make it past the first 30 pages) and heart-full. Romance? I don’t know I’d call it that – stop slinging around genre words like you need them. Just read it, ok?

2 Comments

Filed under Book Club, Fiction, Prize Winner

Tagged as , , , ,

February 16, 2025 · 2:38 pm

Pineapple Street: Not good, and hard to put down

What is the name for the genre of book that is not good, but you don’t want to stop reading, and you feel the whole time as if you are already watching the movie adaptation of the thing? Or the kind where the writing is verging on good and interesting, but is mostly just descriptive in the most obvious sorts of ways? Or where the characters change, but that change is at once extremely obvious from the outset and also simultaneously not convincing when it happens (like the crucial event(s) that force the change are just so predictably ridiculous)? Or where the way to hook the reader is through descriptions of how the ultra wealthy live – of their tablescapes (a word I didn’t know existed), their vacations, their clothes and their houses? Where you read the thing quickly and when it’s over feel faintly irritated with yourself for having given over the time to a book that is so clearly not good but is – nevertheless – hard to put down?

Jenny Jackson‘s Pineapple Street embodies this whatever-genre it is. It is – as was the case for me yesterday – an ideal book for a snowstorm where time vanishes in shovelling, sledding and fort building – and further funnels away in reading a book that when it ends you find yourself flummoxed that you didn’t just return it to the library. Perfect for an airplane, a beach, a doctor’s office where you expect to wait forever.

Oh sorry, did you want to know what it’s about? I’ve already given more time to this book then I’d like, so quickly: ultra rich family lives in Brooklyn Heights (which I’ve since gathered is a fancy neighbourhood in New York) and the millennial children lightly struggle with the Torturous Burden of being born extremely wealthy and the Guilt of not deserving such privilege. The end.

Leave a comment

Filed under Fiction

Tagged as , , , , , ,