Girls, It Is My Obligation To Save You From The Trouble Of These Two Awful Books!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                                                   

                                First of all, darlings, like last year this has been a bad one for contemporary literary fiction.  Though my current read, "Culpability," by Bruce Holsinger, has some potential.

                                But the two books mentioned here are awful.  I am telling you, if "What A Time To Be Alive" was more than its 294 pages, I do not think I would have finished it.  It concerns an Asian woman who becomes an "influencer," who is concerned with morbid deaths, stemming from the passing of a friend of hers who tried to skateboard across two building roofs.  The first is ghastly, the other deaths are just redundant.  If the author is trying to make the reader aware of grief, she succeeds in doing the opposite.  By the last death, I could not care less.

                                   Stay away from this one, girls.  It is depressing and not worth your time.

                                     Now, I had high hopes for "The Loneliness of Sonia And Sunny," by Kiran Desai.  Almost twenty years ago, the author wrote the novel "The Inheritance Of Loss," which I just loved.  So, when I heard a new novel was coming out, I was excited.

                                       To its credit, the book has all the ingredients that press my buttons--two family sagas, social class differences, India versus New York City.  It is 698 pages, which in really not THAT long.  However, I could not get past page 245, because the writing here is so clunky, with too much exposition and description, and not enough character and narrative.  One critic had the nerve to call this novel "Dickensian."  When I heard that, I was excited, but the writing couldn't be more removed from Dickens than if Joan Didion had written it.  At least, she would have been brief.

                                          I kept thinking of longer novels I have read with similar settings, like "A Suitable Boy," by Vikram Seth and "The Far Pavilions," by M.M. Kaye.  They had driving, pulsating narratives so compelling I have read them more than once.  This current novel is like a car that never gets started.

                                             Like I said, save your time, girls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                             Better to tend to those fluffy white curtains, like Aunt Cordelia!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!