A book about the early days of book printing, set in Italy in the 15th century - needless to say, I had seriously high hopes for this one. Sadly, it was crap. As Dorothy Parker once said: “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” Preferably through a window to add the satisfactory crash of breaking glass. And with enough force to launch it into serious orbit. (A welcome addition to the betrayed reader’s fantasy!) Not round the earth, though. Somewhere further afield. One of those wee, golf-ball-sized ice moons of Saturn that only has an alpha-numeric name. That would be satisfactory. Not to mention well-deserved.
Okay, now I guess I have to explain why. Afterall, that is one of the reasons I started this blog–to slow myself down and think more about what I read.
Just as an opening digression: One thing I don’t like, is a book review that simply tells you the plot. (I can read the blurb myself thank you!) What’s the deal with that? I want opinions! Impressions! Reactions! So I will give you the plot in a couple of quick sentences, just to set the scene: It’s the story of a young German, named Wendelin von Speyer, who arrives in Venice in 1468 (or thereabouts) with his brother and a printing press. He is going to set up as one of the first printed-book publishers, no small thing. There is an on-again, off-again parrallel story involving the Roman poet Catallus and his obssesive love affair that inspires his poetry. The link between the two? You guessed it - von Speyer decides to publish Catallus’ racey poems. (Oooow, naughty!)
Okay, so why did it suck? I admit I should have written this report right after I read the book. I was fairly livid. I could have ranted easily for a few thousand words. (And I did, much to the distress of my spouse and two cats.) Hmm. Now I don’t think it’s worth wasting anyone’s time, so I’ll keep it short. (If I can.)
Well, one reason it sucked, was that it was written in that “faux historical voice.” Like an old-timey thesaurus exploded. “Forsaken crags,” “undertaking rubrications,” and “multitudinous desires” abound. Statements like: “Far from mellifluous, I fear my voice more often bore the stale timbre of a scold or a nag” and “As yet, they do not even know one another, and I aim to confect a meeting” are made in all seriousness. If you use big or archaic words you must be intelligent and this must be literature. It’s like that stilted, pompous British accent that actors feel compelled to haul out whenever the movie is historical, regardless of the period: Roman, Greek, King Arthur, 19th century Portugal, whatever!
Another thing that was awful about this book: I bought it looking for honest, history-based fiction. Instead, I found myself stuck with a surprisingly misogynistic, ridiculously unimaginitive and idealistically unrealistic soft-porn, harlequin historical romance that imagined itself to be L-I-T-E-R-A-R-Y with a capital everything. (See above-mentioned exploding thesaurus theory.) I haven’t read Catallus yet myself, but I’m sure he’d be just plain nauseous at having inspired this rubbish.
And that dreadful theme that keeps rearing its ugly head everywhere lately (I mentioned it in my Empire Falls diatribe) . Let me quote directly from this book:
She’s not bad, not bad at core, I mean. She’s been dispossessed and abused all her life. The abused have only guile or violence to reinstate themselves. She’s no worse than anyone cursed with the kind of life she was born with.”
So you’re abused as a child and your incapable of growth, change, or making a good honest life for yourself. And the flip side of that, is if you’re a criminal who was abused, well you’re a victim and there was no other future possible. Next, they’ll find the gene responsible for the whole mess (pharmaceutical patent pending!)
The characters were complete caricatures. As much depth as a breakfast cereal commercial. Clichés out the ying-yang. Heartless, cruel man-crushers; good little wifey; cold, twisted intellectuals who have forgotten their humanity; obese lechers; anyone not beautiful is evil; all the baddies are punished (even if they have to be reincarnated) and agonizingly happy endings for whoever’s left standing at the abrupt end of the book. The latter has the feel of that musical chairs game. When the music stops, everyone lunges for a seat. I think the one left standing in this analogy is the reader.
Ugh.
Okay, just so you know what I went through, here’s a sample passage. It’s completely typical of the novel.
She would seize their son in one hand, scooping up the cat in the other, and dance them both around the kitchen in a wild, poetic ballet. Their son had laughed his fat baby chuckle; even the cat had folded its paws and curled its tail, snuggling closer into the crook of her arm, as if it, too, like Wendelin, wanted to be closer to the source of all that grace and all that energy. And then she would land great smacking kisses on the heads of the cat and the baby and fling them both into the air for a moment till they landed, a tangled ball of fur and soft pink skin, in her arms, and she would be dipping her head among paws and fat dimpled legs to land yet more kisses upon them.
Where do you start? This paragraph should have one of those “Do not attempt this at home, kids!” warnings on it. Let me add that the cat mentioned above was an adopted stray. Ahem. Frankly, if this were even remotely realistic, the woman and the baby would have been cat-claw shredded and in the emergency ward after this stunt. Blood everywhere. What ex-stray cat would tolerate being bounced and danced around by some kind of obvious maniac, and then thrown in the air with a baby? This is so ridiculous I can’t believe I’m bothering to point it out. Then there are the strange logistics: she picks each of them up with one hand. Either the cat and baby are each the size of an orange, or she has hands the size of baseball mitts. And is she a trained circus juggler that she can throw and then catch a cat and a baby at the same time? Finally, there are the sickeningly idealized clichés. (In fact, the whole passage reads like one.) “fat dimpled legs” and “baby chuckle” Ugh. It’s enough to make you frow up. But it’s not just a “baby chuckle,” it’s a “fat baby chuckle” Is the baby fat? or the chuckle? Either way, I’m outta here.
[I hereby vow to let go of my need to finish books. If they are bad, I will stop. I will live a longer, happier life this way.]
Tags:
fiction
Does the Guinness Book of World Records have an entry for “The Most Self-Indulgent Novel Ever” ? If so, I would like to nominate this abomination.