And maybe my expectations were too high because I had loved Lamb's two other novels. But I did not enjoy reading this book. Late last year I wrote about being hesitant to read Garden of Last Days because it was a 9/11 book and I didn't think I wanted to read about that. This book was about both Columbine and Katrina - and it treated both of those subjects in a reasonably predictable and PTSD way - just why I didn't want to read about recent crises.
To compound this, the narrator was not very sympathetic - sort of like a meaner, more careless version of Demille's John Corey. Both he and his wife were explosive, emotionally-stunted people whom I did not like. I kept talking to them, saying "why don't you just tell her you feel that way," and "jeez, just talk to him about how you feel - let him in."
Finally, the second half of the book intersperses the current narrative with letters and a Masters Thesis about the narrator's ancestors. B-O-R-I-N-G. Over the last few years, I have developed a far greater tolerance for historical fiction and alternative methods of moving a story along than just narrative text, but this was unbearable. It was also yet another major theme to weave into an already-crowded story.
The only piece I found interesting was the narrator's visits to his wife in prison. Lamb had obviously researched life in a women's prison carefully (as evidenced by his two compendiums of non-fiction writing by women prisoners since his last novel), and it showed in the writing.
Hopefully Lamb is hard at work with something I'll like more.
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