The Man of My Dreams
Another disappointing second novel.
I quite loved Prep for the impeccable complexity of its sentences, the obsessively detailed realism of its milieu, and the thorough representation of its protagonist's subjectivity. In short: excellent writing and a narrative of class awareness and adolescent development that worked for me (I tag that on because my sister thought it was well-written but wasn't interested in the story, which I can understand).
Interestingly, in The Man of My Dreams, Sittenfeld writes very differently, and I give her points for not going straight into a stylistic rut. The only problem is that her simple sentences are boring. As is her heroine. As is the structure of the novel which episodically details bitter, mopey Hannah Gavener's romantic history (desire for desire, unrequited love, earnest boy, bad boy, more unrequited love, resolution), with none of the sharply-observed social and cultural context that made Prep such an intense read.
The difference between the novels' resolutions kind of sums it up: At the end of Prep, Lee Fiora realizes that much of her difficulty has been of her own making, a realization that reshapes not just her experience, but the reader's, for she suddenly becomes an unreliable narrator in a novel that has fully depended upon her narration. Then she does something stupid--or naive, or unconsciously wish-fulfilling--(the newspaper interview) that dramatically changes her status and understanding, and, again, both Lee and the reader get it, the reader because we have followed her through all the steps.
In The Man of My Dreams, on the other hand, Hannah tells us early on that she makes things difficult for herself, but then she doesn't do anything with this realization, just keeps on being her own passive, grumpy self (OK, she goes to therapy--and the last section of the novel is a letter to her therapist that is so un-letter-like that we are positively in the realm of bad writing). At the end of the novel, she too undergoes a dramatic shift, but she tells us (and her therapist, in the letter), rather than showing us, and it is not so believable. The utter narcissist, fixated on desire, moves to Albuquerque, starts teaching autistic kids, and realizes it is better to give? Uh, yeah, no, not so much.
In other words: not worth reading, though Sittenfeld contines to excel at the writing of mortification and awkward sex.
I quite loved Prep for the impeccable complexity of its sentences, the obsessively detailed realism of its milieu, and the thorough representation of its protagonist's subjectivity. In short: excellent writing and a narrative of class awareness and adolescent development that worked for me (I tag that on because my sister thought it was well-written but wasn't interested in the story, which I can understand).
Interestingly, in The Man of My Dreams, Sittenfeld writes very differently, and I give her points for not going straight into a stylistic rut. The only problem is that her simple sentences are boring. As is her heroine. As is the structure of the novel which episodically details bitter, mopey Hannah Gavener's romantic history (desire for desire, unrequited love, earnest boy, bad boy, more unrequited love, resolution), with none of the sharply-observed social and cultural context that made Prep such an intense read.
The difference between the novels' resolutions kind of sums it up: At the end of Prep, Lee Fiora realizes that much of her difficulty has been of her own making, a realization that reshapes not just her experience, but the reader's, for she suddenly becomes an unreliable narrator in a novel that has fully depended upon her narration. Then she does something stupid--or naive, or unconsciously wish-fulfilling--(the newspaper interview) that dramatically changes her status and understanding, and, again, both Lee and the reader get it, the reader because we have followed her through all the steps.
In The Man of My Dreams, on the other hand, Hannah tells us early on that she makes things difficult for herself, but then she doesn't do anything with this realization, just keeps on being her own passive, grumpy self (OK, she goes to therapy--and the last section of the novel is a letter to her therapist that is so un-letter-like that we are positively in the realm of bad writing). At the end of the novel, she too undergoes a dramatic shift, but she tells us (and her therapist, in the letter), rather than showing us, and it is not so believable. The utter narcissist, fixated on desire, moves to Albuquerque, starts teaching autistic kids, and realizes it is better to give? Uh, yeah, no, not so much.
In other words: not worth reading, though Sittenfeld contines to excel at the writing of mortification and awkward sex.
posted by Becca at
1:49 PM
1 Comments:
that's exactly what I thought about The Man..., although since I didn't love Prep as much as you did it was perhaps less disappointing. She does indeed excel at the writing of awkward sex and the humiliations of adolescence. But that's not quite enough.
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Anonymous, at 8:19 AM
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