Fiction
In reply to the discussion: What are the BEST BOOKS you've read in 2018? [View all]peggysue2
(12,041 posts)I took Saunders recent fiction on vacationneeded reading material for the four-hour flight to Arizona. I fully expected to fall in love with this novel. It had all the right things: right author, right subject material (Lincoln is always a worthy subject) and a quirky frame, a narrative about the living and the dead.
Yet the story did not fully fly for me.
The most evocative character was not Lincoln or young Willie but Lizzie Wright, a young, attractive mulatto woman steeped in silence after a life of physical and sexual abuse. Her story is painful to read but the narrative is effective, wenching and all too human, dead or alive. I wish the rest of the book was equally so. The other quirky, sad-sack characters, denizens of the Oak Hill Cemetery, didnt move me much although there are moments of pathos and irony that are masterful. I wanted more of Lincoln; his characterization was just getting started by the books end. And Willie? He remained a pale ghost.
The elements are all there but I think Saunders got caught up in the whimsical styling of the text, which I found somewhat distracting, even annoying. Im a big fan of fragments but not every other line. For me, the overall impact paled in comparison to say Thornton Wilders Our Town or the free-verse epitaph collection of Edgar Lee Masters, The Spoon River Anthology.
In fact, the experimental stye of the novel reminds me a lot of a flash fiction treatment, a form that Ive read and written in the pastthe quick pacing, the intermingling and parallel structure of elements (the fiction vs historical citations), the intense, compacted nature of the inner dialogues, the rich language use, etc. All of that had a familiar, flash fiction feel.
I just dont think it works in a novel form.
That being said the book has received nothing but praise, readers, writers and critics alike. I think I read Saunders took the Man Booker Prize for this one. Im rarely a contrarian on literary matters, so not liking the book really surprised me. However, Saunders is a very good short story writer in the way Flannery OConnor excelled at the form. Yet the first novel OConnor wrote (Wise Blood) was IMHO positively dreadful.
Being able to jump from short form to novel is a real challenge for a lot of writers. Others have done it, of course, but not all do it well. Ill be interested in catching Saunders second novel if he chooses to write one.
But for the present? Ill stick with his short stories.
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