As I mentioned last week, I picked up two Helen Simonson books. This is her first book. Let's see how it fares.
My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson DNF 26%
The story concerns a 68 year old widowed retired British army major whose younger brother just died. While he is upset with the death of his brother, he also wants to reunite a pair of very expensive shotguns given by their father, one to each, with the understanding that they were to be reunited upon the death of one of the brothers. The problem with this plan is that this is not specified in the brother's will, plus, they can be sold for a lot of money. It is an issue with his sister-in-law and niece.
The second major character, the female lead, is the 58 year old widowed owner of the small village grocery store, who is the English born daughter of Pakistani intellectual immigrant, whose family now wants her to sell the store to a nephew and become a dependent in the larger family.
There is a budding romance between these two characters. Which is fine, but too many other things didn't work for me.
So what where those things that didn't work for me?
First, because even though it is set in England, this is a contemporary story and I don't like contemporary settings for my stories. And like a lot of stories set in Britain today, there is this theme that the country is going to hell in a handcart, which true or not, makes for depressing reading.
Second, and more importantly, I did not like the Major. Or more exactly, I did not like the way Simonson wrote the Major. She wrote him, a 68 year old former army officer and teacher, as if he was a feeble 85 years old man - too frail or frightened to do just about anything on his own. As someone who's 74, I found this portrayal very annoying. Now, I am sure there are plenty of people who are frail at 68, but there is usually a medical reason for this - or an ill-spent life - which seems to be entirely lacking in the make-up of this character which makes his feebleness hard to swallow, and rather insulting.
But I think this portrayal is actually an aspect of a larger phenomena. I will describe it in broad, sweeping terms, but I want to say that I realized I'm doing so, and that there is a broad spectrum, and exceptions, so that nothing I say is in any way absolute. But, having said that, I think the major problem with the Major character is that when a female author is too close - too inside the head - of a male character, they get us males wrong. This makes the thoughts and actions of the Major feel off key to me. Females and males think differently, and I have found that female writers who write male characters in first person, or close third, as in this story, give us males far too much credit. We're not anywhere near as thoughtful as they seem to imagine us to be. I think that most males are far less socially aware than females, but, at least the female authors I've read, give their male character far more awareness, concern and thoughts about social situations than a typical male ever would ever bother thinking about. I am sure that the reverse is also true - male writers writing female characters in first person or close third, will miss many of the typical concerns of their female characters, enough so that a female reader find them "off" as well.
Sometimes this might not be more than just a character who feels a little off, but sometimes it is just too over the top. The male time traveler in The Time Traveler's Wife book was so very concerned about his wedding that I could not take that concern seriously - it seemed so out of the male character, whose general attitude towards the wedding, is "tell me when I need to be there" and everything else is a chore. I DNF'd that book as it seem too unbelievable. And I remember noticing this phenomena in a D E Stevenson book I read decades ago.
In the case of this book, between the Major being written like a feeble old man, and being burdened with so many social insecurities and concerns, the story just dragged for me. I like a good romance, and this had the potential to be a sweet one - but it was, for me buried in the weeds of social etiquette and minute concerns. Plus, there were a slew of unlikable characters that I didn't care to spend my time with. All in all, I felt there where better things to do than spend my time in this book.
Once again we have a book that wasn't written for me, and if I had done my research, I might've known that. But I didn't. That said, there is absolutely nothing about the writing that would put anyone off, it is simply not a story for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment