I'm up for an OMF readalong although I had been thinking I might give Dickens a rest and do one of the other long classics in a similar way. Tolstoy readalong anyone?
I wonder if Great Expectations is a book that men read when they're young and never forget? I know two massive fans who both read it as teenage boys and found it made a huge impression on them. I do think it has an absolutely cracking opening and like Satsuki I think the stuff about Pip distancing from his old life is really well written.
45. Girl, Woman, Other, Bernadine Evaristo
I so wanted to like this. I heard Evaristo on the radio aaaages ago talking about it (before the hype started) and thought the book sounded interesting. Since then of course everyone has raved about the book, it's won the Booker, and I was really excited to read it. It may have been the pressure of my own high expectations but I am really sorry to report - it didn't do it for me.
Good stuff first. It's lively, it's funny, it's interesting, it's representative, it places British black women right at the centre. All of these are good things and I am really glad that this book has been recognised by so many people.
The book is written as a series of chapters, each devoted to a different character - the book it reminded me of was All That Man Is by David Szalay, but it's a similar structure to Home Going or even Olive Kitteridge. In each of these, the author drops you straight into each character, in media res - sometimes quite disconcertingly as you scramble to work out who ARE these people, and are they related to the last chapter, and are you supposed to like them. Evaristo's approach is very different. Her chapters encompass huge amounts of information about each character, often following them throughout their lives, introducing many extra characters in the form of their friends, partners and extended families, telling you everything, telling, telling, telling not showing with the result (for me) that the characters and stories just failed to come to life. The characters DO speak but their conversations (and indeed many of their actions) don't feel organic but rather chosen to make a point - they are like rather mannered characters in a play where each speech is a declamation. The closer you look at each of the characters, the more they disappear, and what you are left with is Evaristo and the points she is trying to make.
I assume this is all deliberate, and I know that others have been really impressed, but I found it frustrating to have so much breadth and so little depth (apparently Evaristo originally wanted 100 characters but in the end whittled it down to 12 main ones). The stories are diverse, and fascinating, but ended up feeling very samey. The exceptions were the moments where Evaristo slowed down and stayed in a situation with a character for long enough for it to come to life - these sections were the bits I enjoyed and the bits that will stay with me. The rest passed me by in a bit of a blur - I felt like I had met a lot of people in a short period of time and not got to know any of them. And yes, I was left with an impression of them as a body, as a group, and I think that was the intention, but it wasn't for me. Really sad not to have been able to love it.