Book Review - Weeping Underwater Looks a Lot Like Laughter

It has been a while since I have finished a fiction book, having been bogged down (or more accurately distracted) by a number of other things, but the same business trip that took me to Chicago for a week, and the Cubs game, allowed me the evening time to finish a pretty good book - Weeping Underwater Looks a Lot Like Laughter. This is a 2010 first novel by Michael J. White.

The novel is touted as a coming of age story, but I'm not completely convinced of that. It is an easy read, and there are moments of fine writing and keen insight, but I don't feel like the main character ever really grows at all. In that regard it is a frustrating book. High school, while a lifetime away in some ways, is still close enough in my memory that this book is able to invoke certain memories, but at the end of it, I would like to have felt like the characters grew over the course of 342 pages, but I never got that sense.

A worthwhile read, and a new writer to keep an eye on. A slightly generous 3.5 stars out of 5.

Books read in 2010: 11 [totalling 2,471 pages]
New authors: 7
Published this year: 4
Classics: still 3

Upon finishing this, I have begun Steve Yarbrough's story collection Mississippi History. I do also have some magazines and history books on the nightstand, so I'm not sure how fast this will go...