Just that, really. I'd never read anything by her before and recently started Mania. It might be one of the most frustrating books I've read in a while. My hands itch with how badly I want to pick up a red pen and edit this book. I can't make it through more than a page without wishing I could pick up the phone and hash it out with her. It's one of those books where you just keep thinking: where was the editor? Are they afraid to challenge an author of her prestige?
The frustrating thing is that the basic idea is good, and there are some flashes of sharp, spiky satire in there, that feel all too real. The problem is, Shriver's got swallowed-a-thesaurus syndrome, and never learned the art of understatement. Just because you've got a big fancy word in your arsenal, doesn't mean you have to deploy it. Sometimes simpler is better. Sometimes you can cut five words out of a sentence, and it's all the stronger for it.
A writer as celebrated as Shriver shouldn't have to be told all this. But even if the lesson passed her by . . . isn't this the job of the editor? Shriver is obviously a strong-willed person, and I imagine she's tough to wrangle. But, come on. The book is so much weaker as a result. The flashes of brilliance are swamped by boggy, overwritten surrounding paragraphs. The story could zip along at a much faster pace, and let the satire fly, but it doesn't. Every sentence is twice as long as it needs to be, and stuffed with information the reader doesn't actually need, dragging the whole thing down to the depths of the ocean.
In addition, every character is unrealistically verbose, and speaks with the same essential 'voice'. The main character's children, husband, and best friend all sound just like her. Which is just silly. A child shouldn't sound like a middle aged adult, no matter how clever they're supposed to be. I'm actually starting to wonder if Shriver knows that the world is full of clever people, who don't talk like Ivy League English professors? I can't shake the feeling she doesn't. I get the feeling we're supposed to be impressed by the way her characters talk, and agog at their cleverness. But it all feels so laboured.
I've never read any of Shriver's other books, but I'm struggling to make it through this one. It makes me quite angry to think she probably got a whacking great advance for this, and someone else was paid good money to edit it, and this is the finished product that made it to market.
But she's a big name author, and fancy words bamboozle people, so that's alright then 🙄