I originally wrote one glib line to express my reaction to Heller’s latest. I’m just so disappointed in the direction this author is going in. He has I originally wrote one glib line to express my reaction to Heller’s latest. I’m just so disappointed in the direction this author is going in. He has departed from his earlier literary novels to now write mainstream fiction. I’m not scolding him for that, and I’m grateful that he still cares about character—I mean, it is impossible not to like the protagonist Ren Hopper. And there are still lines of prose that hit the sweet spot for me. But, for the most part, this book feels uninspired, like Heller is possibly writing a Ren Hopper “book series” and this is #1. The story goes from credible to contrived. Every day, it seems, Ren Hopper, a forest ranger at Yellowstone, is saving lives, rescuing children, preventing murders, stopping an extremist group, and longing for his dead wife, in a circling order. It starts to be over the top, and I had so many eye rolls that I got a bookache headache.
This novel deserves 2.5 stars, but I couldn’t see my way to round up. Perhaps if I’d never read one of his superb novels, like THE PAINTER, I wouldn’t be so disenchanted. After all, everyone likes a sorbet book now and then. But he dumbed it down too much in-between his well-drawn characters and periodic pretty prose. Not everyone agrees with me, though. After I read Bruce Katz’s beautiful 4-star review of this book, I felt a bit guilty and thought maybe I missed out a captivating story all because I wouldn’t accept that Heller decided to write a “genre” book. Maybe I am getting too arrogant and disdainful/condescending in my old age.
If you are a Heller fan, I’d be interested in noting your comparison to this one and his past books. If you appreciate genre and aren’t as haughty as me about books sometimes, you may actually enjoy this one. I’m still stuck on the Last Ranger being his first in a series (that’s my inference and I’m sticking to it!). Also, maybe it would stream well on Netflix or Hulu. Don’t take my word/review for this novel. I’m very opinionated! Go see for yourself, and read Bruce’s review against mine. I did appreciate the setting and background of the park, the wolves, the bears, the elk. Although the book seems uninspired, it was inspiring in one way---I am eager to visit more national parks. I went to Yellowstone many years ago, I can hardly remember. But I want to go to ones that have been on my bucket list for years....more
DNF. I tried. I kept pushing forward, but I just could not finish. In fact, I probably read ⅓ of the story. It does read somewhat like a Russian novel,DNF. I tried. I kept pushing forward, but I just could not finish. In fact, I probably read ⅓ of the story. It does read somewhat like a Russian novel, but it mostly made me grind my teeth in boredom. Shteyngart is one of my favorite contemporary authors, especially Super Sad True Love Story, which was a masterpiece! Lake Success was also compelling. I was ready for yet another pandemic book, but done by an author with a highly original voice. However, I was disappointed. It moved too slowly, and the characters bored me to tears, the plot making my eyes glaze over. What happened? Was it me? I am leaving it unrated, as I admit that I just couldn't engage, but the fault may lie with me....more
What happened to David Mitchell since his Cloud Atlas masterpiece, his Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet stunner, and even his satisfying Bone Clocks?What happened to David Mitchell since his Cloud Atlas masterpiece, his Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet stunner, and even his satisfying Bone Clocks? This is an author who has bended genres and brought me to my knees. However, Utopia Avenue’s coverage of the counterculture 60s feels borrowed and Wiki’d. By far, it’s the worst slog by a notable, former first-rate author that I’ve ever read, a migraine-inducing mash of mixed metaphors and insensate, ham-handed prose, bad poetry, and corny lyrics. It is riddled with clichéd, gaseous sentences that telegraph and italicize every thought and action. Here’s a passage:
“Jellyfish of colored light breed and smear the dancers and Jasper’s mind is set adrift.” “Abracadabra, it’s a boy, why not name him Jasper?” “Why this name and not another?” “A friend? The stone? A long-lost lover?” “Plenty more where we came from. A million per droplet of the stuff of life.”
Yeah, heavy, brother. Groovy.
I should have been warned when Mitchell decided that Utopia’s first album would be “Paradise is the Road to Paradise.” Is this supposed to be clever? Mocking? He takes this novel seriously, and the levity is at best, puerile. How about these lyrics to their first hit, Darkroom:
“We hid under trees from the rain and the dice; but under the trees the rain rains twice.” These aren’t lyrics from counterculture music; it is the trivial stuff of a bubblegum chorus. (Exceptions are Richard Harris and Donna Summer, who can eloquently leave the cake out in the rain).
It opens in 1967, and the premise is the rise and fall of a British rock band. The novel is structured in six sections by the three Utopia LPs (A and B sides), and each song centers on a different band member: Romeo-ish, cheating Dean, the bassist; Lennon-ish Jasper, the watchful and schizoaffectve-ish guitarist; Elf, singer and keyboard player with man problems; and Griff, the brash and nervy drummer from Yorkshire. The characters, like the story, are trite and swirl in the self-referential Mitchellverse. Levon, the manager, is a meta-reference to Bone Clocks. Jasper de Zoet’s reference to Jacob is purposeful but insubstantial, like all of the meta- bombs. Perhaps Mitchell is reminding the reader that he once wrote novels with staying power.
The author hammers home that it is the 60s by all the name-dropping and cameo appearances: Jagger, Bowie, Sandy Denny, Zappa, Joni Mitchell, Hendrix, Jerry Garcia, Nina Simone, Pink Floyd, and the list goes on. Unfortunately, like the novel, their function is flimsy and clumsy, like Marc Bolan’s, “If you want to understand me, read The Lord of the Rings. It’s that simple.”
590+ pages of buzzwords, bromides, and banalities, swirling in Mitchell’s past novels. A solid narrative stands on its own, without weak wink-wink plugs to an author’s oeuvre. The Mitchellverse feebly tries to cover the shortcomings of this hubristic epic, but I wasn’t fooled by this impersonation of an Experience. Gimme Jimi any day instead. ...more
Murakami was like the secret center of a candy, the sweet and salty spot. Reading him was like entering another dimension, with the juxtaposition of hMurakami was like the secret center of a candy, the sweet and salty spot. Reading him was like entering another dimension, with the juxtaposition of hypnagogic images, surreal and hallucinatory dreamscapes. Murakami never disappointed me before, with his allegorical symbols such as an empty well or an underground city, and bewildering plots but with accessible characters caught in individual or collective traumas. Many of his novels were postmodern, but even in his realistic fiction, such as NORWEGIAN WOOD, you got a sense of the “other,” due to his dark, searching, and waiting atmosphere and tone. And humor—there was always a piping of humor with the dramatic. Reading him felt like watching a cat with fugitive wings. So why did this one take such a hard nosedive?
Did Murakami usually have an editor to keep him in check, to clean it up? It almost seems as if, since the author has arrived, over and over again, that he wanted other hands off his text, or perhaps he was experimenting. But who would experiment with and cumbersome prose and bland details? The voice sounded juvenile at times and the plot was buckling under its own lack of subtlety. And, instead of trusting the reader to read between the lines and pick up on suggestion, he habitually jabs us with over-explication and declarations. By the time I was 25% through the novel, I wanted to heave it across the room. It was sagging under its own weight.
As an example, the narrator, a portrait painter, talks about why he was attracted to his wife, a secret he never revealed to her. He goes on to ay that she wasn’t outstandingly attractive, but rather resembled his dead sister, especially her eyes. There was something hackneyed, unoriginal about it. “…the fact that her eyes reminded me so much of my sister who’d died at twelve…Without those eyes, I probably never would have tried to win her over…That was the sole secret I kept from her…”
There are other details that, for me, landed with a thud. Part of it was presentation—a rather flavorless buffet of many “secrets” and anecdotal information I felt I’d heard before. The style was tedious and monotonous. I would have been engaged more if the fictional world and characters blended together more seamlessly, if the sentence structure had some flair. How narrative and description are invented is integral to reader absorption. I suppose my expectations were high, as Murakami had been known for his unique and imaginative language to build his stories. For me, KILLING COMMENATORE—and what a great title, that refers to a hidden painting—it lacked the author’s talent for atmosphere and tone, and I found it too cloying and overexposed, for lack of a better word. The painting idea had muscle, but the telling is where it atrophied for me.
If I missed something, or readers heartily disagree with me, I understand. I don’t relish posting a two-star review, but Murakami is no debut writer. Someone of his stature can handle criticism –it’s the fans I am concerned with. I am a dedicated fan, also, and appreciate that not every book is a winner. There are so many earlier books that are top tier, such as THE WINDUP BIRD CHRONICLE, or KAFKA ON THE SHORE, or A WILD SHEEP CHASE, and of course HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND. Choose any of those or many others for a wild and intoxicating ride....more
switterbug (Betsey)
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