Sister: A Waste of My Time

I recently did something I never do. I read a book because there was an advertisement for it in the New York Times Book Review. Not a review. Just an ad. With blurbs. That made it sound like a good book. I was duped.

I also blame many of the Goodreads readers since I checked out what some of them were saying before I read the book. My opinion of Goodreads readers has now gone down a bit.

I know I have no one to blame but myself and rest assured that I will never do something so silly again. I remember seeing ads for books on the subway and thinking what a weird thing it is to advertise books that way. Who would read a book on a billboard? It wasn't like I ever saw some great book that everyone was raving about on the subway station ads. Usually thrillers and such. Which isn't really my genre and so I was sucked in even more by the Goodreads review that called it something like a thriller for people who don't like thrillers. They made it sound literary.

Again, no one but myself to blame.

So anyway. The book is Sister: A Novel by Rosamund Lupton. And right away we have the first thing that annoyed me. The "A Novel" thing after the colon. Really? You needed to tell me that? I wouldn't have figured it out even though the book is, you know, fiction?

It started vaguely promising (I'm not going to do a plot recap at all - if you care enough, you can go on Amazon or Goodreads and find one). Seemed well enough written with interesting things like:

"No, from the start I was clearly a Beatrice, sensible and unembellished in Times New Roman, with no one hiding inside. Dad chose the name Arabella before I was born. The reality must have been a disappointment." p. 3

and

"But that’s what his “discretion” always was – disownership hiding behind a more acceptable noun." p. 13

But then things started to horribly wrong. The narrator is supposed to be some kind of marketing person living in New York. So every color is described by its Panetone number with some vague commentary about how to ordinary people it looked like beige, but was actually Panetone number blah blah blah. And then as if this wasn't annoying enough, it gets dropped midway through in favor of random literary references that just need to show how smart she (whether author or narrator I'm not sure) is. And THEN she decides that what she really always wanted to be an architect. Okay then. What's next? I always wanted to be a lumberjack!

 

But I digress.

After a while (a short while), I gave up trying to underline anything of interest and instead just starting making the Kindle version of margin notes. And I love that you can do that in library books, btw. I think it is actually amusing to see those notes so here you go:

Me: Clinque, Panetone, Pixar – these brand names are so jarring especially when the rest of the writing is quite good. At times.
p. 11 (Ah, so naive and hopeful)

Me: Really? Triffids? p. 32 (Seriously, I have to agree with me here. Triffids??? Who does that?)

Me: And now sudden random literary references: Mad Hatter, Auden, Ancient Mariner p. 56 (But it's too late to impress me. You already said triffids)

"…boiling up the bunnies "
Me: sigh… p. 73

"…Chagall print in the kitchen"
Me: Fine art now! p. 77

"They actually use words like that: “saving” and “owing her life to,” comic-book words that are in danger of turning me into someone who wears pants on the outside of her tights, switches outfits and personas in telephone booths and has web coming out of her wrists."
Me: That’s how you do it. p. 105 (I think the point I was trying to make there was that you didn't need to work so hard on name dropping the pop culture references, that you could find a broader theme that the reader then renders specific in his/her own mind)

"…Kafkaesque turned ordinary"
Me: Ummmm…okay p. 141

"I hadn’t been in a public place since you’d died and the loud voices and the laughter made me feel vulnerable."
Me: Doesn’t she work in a bar? p. 151 (Yeah, about that one. One of the first things she does is go take her dead sister's job at the bar b/c that happens a lot. And aren't bars full of, let me see, loud voices and laughter? What the hell?)

"I reminded you I studied literature, didn’t I?"
Me: ugh p. 190

"She was framed for her own suicide."
Me: Huh??? p. 227 (If someone can explain this to me, I'm happy to listen.)

"Not just a double but a triple negative. His oratory wasn’t an impressive as he believed it to be."
Me: Thank you for the commentary. p. 238 (Pot, meet Kettle)

"…Proust’s tea-soaked petites madeleines"
Me: sigh… p. 246

"Surely a good therapist should produce a Dorian Gray-style portrait from under the couch so the patient can see the person they really are."
Me: Stop trying so hard!!!p. 260

"We get to St. James’s Park, which looks like that scene from Mary Poppins, all blossom and buds and blue sky with white meringue clouds. "
Me: No. p. 272 (What if I, the reader, have never seen Mary Poppins?)

"I thought of Donne chastising the busy old fool of a sun for making him leave his lover and marveled that his poetry now applied to me."
Me: pllltthhh p. 293

Really makes you want to go read it, doesn't it? What is even more mystifying is that I went and found the New York Times review of this and they seemed to like it. So clearly part of my problem is that I just don't like thrillers. I'm not much of a beach read person. I know it's an art form in its own right to be able to produce such page turners, but they just don't do it for me.

At least I didn't buy the book!