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seeking: book recommendations
Aug. 21st, 2012 08:31 amI've been all about the doomed marriage/suburban collapse stories lately. I don't really have an explanation other than some sad attempt at self-education. I read Revolutionary Road this summer, and just finished Run, River by Joan Didion - and need more like them. The titles do not have to start with Rs. An older-set, psychedelic variant that has stayed with me: The Sheltering Sky. I also read The Slap this summer, which is a little different compared to the first two, and in a way the most depressing because the characters were drawn much less sympathetically with the least self-awareness (or so it seemed to me) compared to the first two. But seriously, I am not one to care about sympathetic characters.
Also, Run, River is so good! I almost gave up on it while reading the first part but once the story goes back into the past it improves by leaps and bounds. I think it's really about women operating in society than doomed relationships, although there's plenty of those - Lily is the inept, broken one, whereas Martha is the emotional, normal one. I think some of the most interesting segments take place when Everett, the repressed and order-obsessed man (Lily's husband/Martha's brother), is out ignoring problems at home and Lily and Martha, who start off disliking each other, are flailing at each other. At one point Martha tells a guy she meets at a wedding that he is disgusting and she is just as bad as Lily for sleeping with him, and when he asks who Lily is, she replies that Lily is her sister and he isn't fit to say her name. Lily marries Everett basically because he is the first to ask and she thinks it's what she's supposed to do, and so ends up with a guy she can't actually "talk out loud" to; Martha falls so recklessly in love with Ryder Channing that she's essentially crippled from being able to accomplish anything else. Then I guess there's Francie. Francie gets druuuunk.
Also, Run, River is so good! I almost gave up on it while reading the first part but once the story goes back into the past it improves by leaps and bounds. I think it's really about women operating in society than doomed relationships, although there's plenty of those - Lily is the inept, broken one, whereas Martha is the emotional, normal one. I think some of the most interesting segments take place when Everett, the repressed and order-obsessed man (Lily's husband/Martha's brother), is out ignoring problems at home and Lily and Martha, who start off disliking each other, are flailing at each other. At one point Martha tells a guy she meets at a wedding that he is disgusting and she is just as bad as Lily for sleeping with him, and when he asks who Lily is, she replies that Lily is her sister and he isn't fit to say her name. Lily marries Everett basically because he is the first to ask and she thinks it's what she's supposed to do, and so ends up with a guy she can't actually "talk out loud" to; Martha falls so recklessly in love with Ryder Channing that she's essentially crippled from being able to accomplish anything else. Then I guess there's Francie. Francie gets druuuunk.
