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Originally Posted by Bookpossum
I'm starting to feel sorry for Margaret Atwood! [...]
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Yes, I do look at my own posts sometimes and cringe a little. I always find that when I have so much trouble with a book I have a lot to say about it (and not in a good way). I'm hoping Margaret Atwood has better things to do than read me taking out my frustrations.
It's the downside of book club reading. This is a book I would have put aside as simply "not for me", but I made myself finish it in order to be able to discuss it. But the result is that I came away feeling more strongly negative about it than if I had just put it aside unfinished. And, as we've discussed before, sometimes criticism of a work seems to come out as criticism of the author. This is often unfair because we cannot know the circumstances that led to the result we are critiquing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bookpossum
If you take this to its logical extreme, does any work of fiction serve a real purpose? [...]
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It's an interesting question. Certainly there are some who don't read fiction because they can't see the point. I'm not one of them, obviously.
But when a book of fiction (even if only partly fiction) fails to strike some sort of chord with me then it has failed to serve a purpose
for me. I'm not so blind as to think the book itself is a failure, that it serves no purpose for anyone, because it's obvious that it has worked for others.
In general I prefer a book to be one thing or another (fiction or non-fiction) although I have found enjoyment in some exceptions: I have my father's collection of Ion L. Idriess books on the shelf (Idriess made a career out of mixing fact and fiction), and I quite enjoy most of those even though many are quite dry reading by today's standards.
And I generally prefer a book to say something definite. [...] Sorry, but that was rubbish. What I really mean to say is that I want a book to leave me feeling satisfied - even if I may sometimes have trouble articulating why I it is so. It does not always mean that I need all the pieces neatly tied off, sometimes the satisfaction comes from what is left to the reader. Satisfaction is one of those nebulous things that distinguishes "good" and "bad" books according to our own tastes. Authors cannot (always) be blamed for a lack of satisfaction, although in this situation I think Atwood must have known some people would not be happy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
[...] I honestly don't know. The elements of this story seem like it would result in a winner, but much as I'd like to have been caught up in the story, I wasn't. Maybe it's as simple as essentially knowing the ending early on and that watching the story play out wasn't all that compelling.
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I wondered that. I did seem to wake up a bit near the end, perhaps in anticipation of some freedom for the fiction to inform what had happened to to Grace after she disappeared in New York State.
I've suggested a few times that this felt almost like two books. The first 100 pages (pre Ch12) that told the story in brief using lots of different perspectives, and the 350 pages following that told the story again, but mostly from Grace and Dr Jordan. I think there should have been enough to keep us interested, even knowing the ending, but maybe it was just that 350 pages of it was too much to ask.