cahn

3/5. Ummm... okay. I was told this was a book about a Gen X woman who had divorced parents, swore she would never get divorced, especially after they had kids, and then got divorced. Well, that was exactly what I got. I mean, it's not badly written, I suppose (though like many other kiss-and-tell Gen-X memoirs I have come across, it is sprinkled heavily with pop science studies to give it the illusion of being more than a kiss-and-tell memoir, and it doesn't work and alienates me more than if they hadn't been there in the first place), but it reads like she wrote it as a therapy session, and publishing it was an afterthought.

She has these awesome theories about marriage, like her theory that because of equal parenting (both partners know what it's like to work, both partners know what it's like to take care of the kids), "we don't have much appreciation for each other's differences and separateness during those early years in our children's life." I, uh. Have found it to be exactly the opposite? Maybe this has something to do with why your marriage imploded? Also marriage is like incest because you're seeking the validation you didn't get from your parents! Um. I see what she's saying about validation, a little, but... um.

Also she has awesome theories about how divorce is to blame for any ills Gen X experienced, such as the housing bubble, misogyny, and helicopter parenting. Because as we all know, especially those of us in Gen X, misogyny didn't exist before Our Totally Cool Generation, Or At Least the Generation that Would Be Totally Cool if Only Our Parents Hadn't Divorced. (Where by "Our," I do not of course mean "my," as I belong to that lucky 50% who had parents who stayed together. Which may have contributed to my sense of alienation from this book, I don't know. Though most of the people I know with divorced parents tend to be a little more... um... personally responsible than Thomas comes across with her theories.)

I'd recommend Necessary Sins far more over this, as Sins is actually about a bit more than a therapy session. I mean... I have something of a weakness for this kind of book, so I did kind of snarf it down, but I also have a weakness for processed cheez dip, you know, and I'm not going around recommending cheez dip to y'all. I found a goodreads review that called it "mind-bogglingly solipsistic," and I have to say that's a good description.

There are three things that will beggar the heart and make it crawl--faith, hope, and love--and the cruelest of these is love.

3+/5 (subject to sequel revision). I finished my first Valente! So this is a book that I would never have read except on iPod. I read this in dribbles and drabbles while getting my hair cut, in airports, while getting gas for the car, and so on.

I had sort of a weird reaction to this book. It took me a really loooong time to get into it, for one thing, which is why I had to read it on iPod. I don't know that I take well to Valente's style. I mean, she is clearly a good writer, but I think that writers with distinct styles tend to polarize people into "love" and "don't love," and I'm definitely in the "don't love" camp with respect to Valente. (McKillip, who has a similar lyrical style, is totally in the "love" camp for me, although I certainly know a number of people who put her in the "don't love" pile. I have no idea why I love one and not the other.)

Then, around the third-to-halfway point, I decided I was kind of in love with its strange Pentexoreans and their ways of dealing with immortality.

Then, a little more than halfway through, it decided to turn into a Polemic Against Christianity, and I was all... uhhh, okay, what? What upset me about this development was not the polemic itself, which was annoying but not particularly upsetting (annoying not least because the beginning of the book had me hoping for some at least quasi-deep theological discussion), but the part where it seemed to be putting itself forward as avant-garde and daring for pointing out the flaws in Christianity. Um, no. About seven hundred years too late to be avant-garde (the Divine Comedy did it earlier and better), and almost thirty years too late to be daring (in the 80's Mists of Avalon might have sort-of been daring for pointing out the patriarchial hypocrisies of Christianity, but these days... not so much). Also, it annoyed me that the Pentexoreans are basically sophisticated twenty-first-century voices. Prester John himself is extraordinarily irritating, because his character is basically that of Stupid Ignorant StrawmanFundamentalist!Christian who gets his mind blown. Part of my irritation is that apparently John had read pretty much zero theology, because any early christian church theologian worth his salt could have come up with way better answers than John did when the Pentexorians asked him theology questions. You can imagine that conversations where a twenty-first-century sophistication is asking a really, really stupid and ignorant guy questions are at best demolishing of straw men and at worst John sitting around stammering, "Uh, okay, guess you're right."

Then, a little further, and the book turned (well, somewhat; the Christian-bashing is still around; for example, the above quote is a beautifully done dark take on Paul -- but, um, sort of a set piece) into something else... a rumination on immortality and identity, and that part was really awesome.

Then I got almost to the end, and the Christianity part started to actually get interesting, and then... everything sort of ended in the middle and mushed into a pulp. (Actually, it mushes into a literal fictional pulp, but anyway.) ... I don't know what I think, because this is book 1 of a (three-part?) series, and I have no idea of how much of the stuff that abruptly ended in the middle is going to be taken up in subsequent books, but I suspect not the parts that I thought were really interesting... but maybe so, in which case I'll be pretty excited.

And then I got to the end, and Plot Happened, and Setup for Next Book happened, and, okay, whoa, yeah.

So in the end, I liked it, enough that I'll probably read the next two books. But it was a bit of a rollercoaster for me. And I suspect after reading the second and third books there will be backaction on my opinion of the first, though I do not know what it will be.

I think those who already love Valente will really love this book. I think those who have more than a passing familiarity with Christian theology will be annoyed by this book. I think that those who have no opinion on the first two things, but who like fantastical writing, will like this book very much, probably more than I did. I think (and am living proof) that it is possible to be annoyed by this book and still be impressed by it.