Last year my nomination for the group was My Best Friend's Excorcism. One of the comments that was made at that meeting was that the lady in question was embarassed to read the book in public because of the cover - scroll back through my blog to see the cover in question (which I happen to think was amazingly good).
With this book, I know exactly how she felt.
This has to be one of the most uninspired covers of all time. Even Lavinia had a better picture regardless of how generic and bland it was.
This is a coming of age story that follows Elena and her best friend Lila from childhood to late adolescence in a run down poor neighbourhood in Naples. Elena is incredibly bright and has her first stab at writing for a magazine/journal near the end, even though it doesn't actually see print. There's a feeling of fictionalised autobiography going on through this story.
I have nothing against coming of age stories, or stories where nothing much particularly happens. Paul Auster's 4321 was 4 separate stories about the same boy growing up in slightly different family circumstances - and becoming a writer of different sorts in three of them. I adored that book.
So Many Ways to begin by Jon Magregor follows a museum curator through a few weeks of his utterly unremarkable existence and is a stunnningly good read.
1933 was a Bad Year by John Fante was one of my favourite novels of last year - again, about a character coming of age in a poor society, much like Elena in this.
However, this pales in comparison to any of those. Going by the reaction at the book group, where the women praised it effusively and there was a resounding meh from myself and the rest of the male contingent, this is a book that women appreciate much more than men. For example, what felt like 59 pages worth of debate over what wedding dress Lila should wear - but which was actually only 2.5 pages (still 1.75 too much) - is not the sort of detail that catches my interest.
It started with a fairly intriguing prologue, where the present day Elena gets a phone call from Lila's grown up son and we find out that Lila has disappeared of her own accord. Elena sits down to write the story of her friendship with Lila.
I assumed the book might actually lead up to the events that sparked the disappearance. It's not an unrealistic hope. However, that ddn't happen. This finishes at Lila's wedding (aged 16) to a 25 year old local businessman who proposed to her two years previously. More than a little icky.
Apparently if you want to find out why she vanished you need to read the next three volumes.
I think I will politely decline. The writing is not bad. It was good enough to keep me reading for the most part, although there were definite lulls. The characters of Elena and Lila are well drawn, but the story is somewhat lacking in narrative drama. We end on a huge clifffhanger over a pair of shoes that an uninvited guest to the reception is wearing. Yes, this is that exciting a book.
At the meeting I gave it a provisional 6/10. I'm downgrading that to a 4.
Thankfully, a Josh Malerman that I've not yet read dropped through my door today, so something good to read next is guaranteed.
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