It feels weird putting these two in the same review, but there you have it. I’ve been struck by the dreaded reading slump.
The Plot (Jean Hanff Korelitz) **
The plot of The Plot: author Jacob is struggling. His first novel made a modest impact, but didn’t sell well despite positive reviews. His second novel went ignored entirely. To make ends meet, Jacob teaches writing to a group of wannabes and one of them tells him the plot of a novel he is planning to write. Jacob is astounded. When, years later, he finds out the student has died before ever putting his story to the page, Jacob decides to write it. The novel, Crib, becomes an instant bestseller, making Jacob a household name. Soon after, threatening letters arrive: someone knows what Jacob did and isn’t happy about it.
I didn’t finish this book.
Normally I wouldn’t write a review about the dreaded DNF, but I made it about 80% in before calling it quits. I rarely DNF books at that point but it’s the second time in two months. My worldview is shattered.
Anyway, it wasn’t terrible but it completely failed to grab my attention. I was hoping for a well-written thriller that elevated itself above the rest by fun metatextualism and it does that to some degree, but the execution was rather dull. I don’t mind a slow pace but this was a slog, and the main character is just a slightly better written version of the dreaded how-can-you-be-that-stupid type found often in thrillers (though in his defense, the common advice of ‘have you tried going to the police’ wouldn’t really work here.
Then again, it’s much ado about nothing. Authors can draw inspiration from anywhere and without wanting to give away too much, it’s likely that Jacob would’ve gotten away with it and that makes the novel feel a bit less urgent. The ending, frankly, is just dumb. Plot twists sell, and it apparently doesn’t matter if they make any sense. Much is made about the spectacular plot of Crib, but I didn’t think it was all that original.
All in all, I was a little disappointed. As thrillers go it’s not a bad book. I’d just expected a bit more out of it.
Stone Yard Devotional (Charlotte Wood) ****
A nameless, middle-aged Australian woman works in nature conservation. Driven to despair – by her job, by the demagogues, by governments undermining her efforts, by her husband leaving – she checks herself into a retreat in an Australian convent. She ends up not leaving, abandoning her life for a dull, steadfast existence of worship and household drudgery. There are mice. So many mice.
The novel describes a lot of things, all of them with the same quiet, modest observance that a consecrated life purports of offer. There are the small nuisances the nuns suffer amongst each other. One forgets to lock the door. Another complains about dinner. There are moments of connection, too; each person is shaped by their own memories and traumas.
It’s a slow, meandering novel in which very little happens. We meet our main character when her escape from daily life is meant to be for a few days only, and then later, when she’s been a member of the community for several years. A few things happen. A former member of their community, who went to serve with the prostitutes, orphans and criminals in Bangkok, went missing years ago; her body has been found and her bones are returned to the convent. With it comes her friend and fellow nun Helen Parry, a former classmate of the narrator, with whom she has some history. Both the bones and Helen unsettle and uproot the precarious balance within the community. It’s a very human and respectful book; people are enigmatic, some more than others. The narrator is kind and compassionate and yet thinks with grief and pain about the unkind things she did as a child, teenager, young adult, mourning the fact that it’s too late to make amends.
And there’s a mouse plague. The mice are everywhere. They gnaw through plastic. They eat the oven’s insulation. Traps of all sorts are placed in increasing, quiet desperation. People put the legs of their bed in buckets of water lest the mice crawl in there with them.
It is not a religious novel in the traditional sense; at one point the main character ponders that nobody has ever asked her whether she believes in God before she entered the order. It’s a very mournful, elegiac novel that manages to put down how it feels to live in a world where climate change, deforestation and species extinction are pooh-poohd by demagogues who insist there is nothing wrong. It feels exhausting to have to worry about things that lie beyond your control when you can see that the people who should take it seriously never do, and you can see why the main character has chosen this particular life. It’s a little repetitive after a while, but I guess that’s the point; and for a novel in which nothing much happens, it’s surprisingly enthralling.