A literature course called Great Novellas beckoned me. I enrolled on it in order to discover writers or works I had not encountered before, and to sample fine writing I might learn from in order to improve my craft. This was one of the books on that course.
Click the pic to see the book on Amazon (affiliate link)
If you like stories about teenaged angst, and especially female teenaged angst, you will like this book. Well I don’t and I didn’t. The protagonist seems obsessed with her breasts, or rather the lack of them (at least at first). I thought that was meant to boys’ job? I found it all rather tedious, so much so that by the end I was virtually shouting, “Put them away!”
I will say a few positive things about it though. First, I thought some of the writing was quite beautiful. Like this bit:
“My body fights travel, sends up the weapons of a homeless person, the boundaries thinly drawn, the body with its own knowledge, disorientations, defenses [sic]...”
Second, it’s an interesting device, to switch between the teenaged narrator and the adult one.
Third, there were some sections which were actually exciting, and I don’t mean the bits about breasts. For example, whether the narrator will be caught with her fingers in the till.
So, not all bad. I’m pleased I’ve discovered Lorrie Moore, and perhaps I’ll try another of her novels once I’ve recovered from this one.
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