The Blind Assassin - thoughts from page 159

My main feeling on The Blind Assassin so far is that reading it straight after Why Did I Ever was a terrible mistake. To go from such sharp, concise prose to this wordy, meandering, slow-boil of a book is not exactly sitting well with me so far.

Two weeks in, and I don't give a hoot about Laura Chase and her vague notions of ownership or her tedious affair with a bit of rough. I don't care that Iris is old and alone. And I'm really really not interested in the blind assassin novel-within-a-novel-set-on-a-distant-planet.

But, while life's too short to sit through bad movies and books, I'm pretty sure a tipping point is just around the corner so I'm going to persevere. After all, Sian loved it, the Booker judges loved it and everyone on GoodReads seems to love it too. Come on, Atwood. Let's do this.

Why Did I Ever - Mary Robison

And lo, the first book of 2012 has been read (actually finished around 14 January).

If 2011 was the year of Amy Hempel, at least in my own personal library, 2012 may be the year of Mary Robison.

Why Did I Ever reads like it was written through Twitter, in short sharp bursts that are sometimes no more than a sentence long. It's almost a stream of consciousness but littered with flashbacks and inferences to events that are never fully explained. For example, the book's heroine - for she is, I think, a heroine - is called Money, but she can't be bothered to explain why.

Money is in crisis. Her cat is missing. Her boyfriend's a dick. Her list of exes is as long as her arm. Her boss is a bitch. Her daughter's an addict. Her son has been seriously abused. Her correspondence with Sean Penn remains one-sided.

The bite-sized snippets of her life meandering towards breakdown are really revelatory. So often while reading WDIE, I'd realise I knew something about the plot that Robison had never actually told me. How did I know so much? Because she's a master, that's how. I think perhaps she was secretly inside my head all along.

I don't want to spend too many words trying to describe Why Did I Ever, it doesn't seem to be in the spirit of the thing. Suffice to say I really enjoyed it, and I'm looking forward to reading it again knowing what I know now.

A favourite quote:

Mev is seated across from me. She looks painted by Degas tonight. It is a goulash of feelings I have for her just now. 

Next up: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. I'm 161 pages in and jeez louise is it slow going.