Well, my string of very good books has come to a grinding halt. The most recent book I have tried to read is Emma Donoghue's Room. Room was published recently, a
nd is one of those books I picked up based solely on the Amazon Best Books of the Month recommendations, as well as good customer ratings. The book is told from the point of view of a 6 year old boy who knows nothing of the world other than the "room" that he and his mother live in (or are imprisoned in, for a reason that is not explained early on). He has never been outside this room, and the only things he knows of the outside world are gleaned from a modest amount of television watching. The story sounded like an interesting premise, and was reviewed well.
So everything sounded good, until I actually tried to read the book. The book starts on page 3, and I got to page 21 before I just couldn't take it anymore (and it took two different nights to get this far). The "voice" that this novel is written in is an incredibly annoying faux-childish mishmash of intentionally bad grammar and sloppy word choice. I couldn't shake the feeling when reading it that this was an adult's impression of what a child would write; it never felt in the slightest like something that any child actually would write. In the limited number of pages I forced myself to slog through (and it was a slog), there was a disconcerting feeling that the boy was at times incredibly bright and at other times incredibly dense. This may well have been the author's intent, but the scant 18 pages that I managed to get through felt so much like work that I just couldn't bear to keep going. I read for fun and this was anything but fun... Ugh.
nd is one of those books I picked up based solely on the Amazon Best Books of the Month recommendations, as well as good customer ratings. The book is told from the point of view of a 6 year old boy who knows nothing of the world other than the "room" that he and his mother live in (or are imprisoned in, for a reason that is not explained early on). He has never been outside this room, and the only things he knows of the outside world are gleaned from a modest amount of television watching. The story sounded like an interesting premise, and was reviewed well.So everything sounded good, until I actually tried to read the book. The book starts on page 3, and I got to page 21 before I just couldn't take it anymore (and it took two different nights to get this far). The "voice" that this novel is written in is an incredibly annoying faux-childish mishmash of intentionally bad grammar and sloppy word choice. I couldn't shake the feeling when reading it that this was an adult's impression of what a child would write; it never felt in the slightest like something that any child actually would write. In the limited number of pages I forced myself to slog through (and it was a slog), there was a disconcerting feeling that the boy was at times incredibly bright and at other times incredibly dense. This may well have been the author's intent, but the scant 18 pages that I managed to get through felt so much like work that I just couldn't bear to keep going. I read for fun and this was anything but fun... Ugh.
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