C
I really wanted to like this book, AND get through it. After all, I like wordplay, postmodern art, and difficult reads. However, I just don't like Ali Smith('s writing).
It's been close to a decade since I tried finishing this novel, and I hoped my attempt this year would be a successful one, given how tech and surveillance have become issues that are more pressing than ever. Unfortunately, the over-indulgent punning and one-dimensional villains ofThere But For The simply proved too much for me to handle. That, and the unrealistically precocious child character that was nothing but a mouthpiece for the 50-something (at the time) author and her views.
The whole novel deliberately starves readers of relational sincerity--here, Smith is making a point about our contemporary world--which is frustrating for me as a fan of Smith's earlier Girl Meets Boy, which was, in my memory, full of tenderness. When the author spares us some honesty, like in Anna's decision to care for Miles, her anguish at West Asian lives measuring up to be less than a lightbulb in the Home Office's eyes, and Mark's recollection of Jonathan's love for him, as mediated through a shaky camcorder (possibly my favourite description in the genre of contemporary prose), it feels like a hard-earned reward. I simply wished I didn't have the suffer through such dry and humourless text to get there though!
I really wanted to like this book, AND get through it. After all, I like wordplay, postmodern art, and difficult reads. However, I just don't like Ali Smith('s writing).
It's been close to a decade since I tried finishing this novel, and I hoped my attempt this year would be a successful one, given how tech and surveillance have become issues that are more pressing than ever. Unfortunately, the over-indulgent punning and one-dimensional villains ofThere But For The simply proved too much for me to handle. That, and the unrealistically precocious child character that was nothing but a mouthpiece for the 50-something (at the time) author and her views.
The whole novel deliberately starves readers of relational sincerity--here, Smith is making a point about our contemporary world--which is frustrating for me as a fan of Smith's earlier Girl Meets Boy, which was, in my memory, full of tenderness. When the author spares us some honesty, like in Anna's decision to care for Miles, her anguish at West Asian lives measuring up to be less than a lightbulb in the Home Office's eyes, and Mark's recollection of Jonathan's love for him, as mediated through a shaky camcorder (possibly my favourite description in the genre of contemporary prose), it feels like a hard-earned reward. I simply wished I didn't have the suffer through such dry and humourless text to get there though!