Laura

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? was the best book I've read in a while, but it was difficult. Scott bought it several months ago and I've been meaning to read it ever since then. The topic is starting to get close to home, with aging relatives in both our families and the geographic, financial, psychological, and emotional issues that come along with that.

Being the person responsible for aging and difficult parents sounds terrifying. Maybe Roz Chast decided (or agreed) to present the narrative this way, but she seemed to have no support from her husband or family or friends. Her parents had enough money for the extensive care they needed, but even paid help 24 hours a day wasn‰ЫЄt enough to ease Roz's anxiety and guilt. Maybe she did have more help than she portrayed in the book. Maybe she didn't allow anyone to help her. Maybe your emotional health seems unimportant when you take responsibility for the people who raised you. I don't know.

(Originally published in my weekly newsletter, All This Reading, with some differences.)

I grew up with several shelves' worth of Agatha Christie books in the built-in bookcase above the stairs, but I only ever read one short story or novella. I borrowed a few books from my parents the last time I visited, and the first sentence of this one introduced a novelist. What writer doesn't enjoy reading about novelists? So I started with this one.

The story was fine, interesting and engaging enough, but it lit none of the fires that Sayers usually does for me, or that Hammett and Highsmith recently did. I might go on to read By the Pricking of My Thumbs and The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side because those are the only titles that have stuck with me since my youth, but I don't think I'll miss much if I leave the rest be.

February 2018:
YEP. This book is basically The Life-Changing Magic of Nurturing Your Inner Artist. I didn't ‘do' the course in the same way that I didn't ‘do' the decluttering process prescribed by Marie Kondo, but I still got so much out of this book. The exercises (“tasks”) are great and so are the pep talks. I don't care that it comes across as a little woo-woo. If you're not willing to tolerate a little woo-woo, I don't know how you can be creative. Creating things is magic – I don't know how else to explain it. But I get it if the tone isn't for you.

I loved that so much of this book is about self-care, just packaged in a somewhat dated style. It would be so interesting to see this book reframed from a feminist millennial perspective. Same concepts with a tone and examples more suited to our current times. A Call Your Girlfriend or Two Bossy Dames or Forever 35 version of The Artist's Way would be amazing.

I started taking this book a bit more seriously than I had initially because I really like The Artist's Way Everyday, which I did not finish. I wrote about it on my blog.

November 2017:
Trying this again. Might be the right time, this time.

August 2012:
I wasn't planning on “doing” the book but now I can't even face reading it. The first few chapters were enough for me. I will try reading it again another time but now is not that time.

I would've given this two stars, but two of the four cases had unexpected resolutions, so props for that. I was probably expecting too much and should've been tipped off by the ‘family saga' descriptor, which I guess is code for child abuse. I was expecting unconventional, morbidly funny, literary detective fiction, and got none of these things.

The funniest part of the book was the Land sisters' complete lack of sadness upon their father's death, and it went downhill from there. Jackson wasn't a terribly compelling character. The prose style was kind of unnoticeable to me, which is supposed to be a good thing, but it's kind of disappointing when the writing doesn't do anything more than get the job done.

There are no motives for the crimes in this novel, which I think may have been part of what bothered me. The narrative focused on those suffering the aftermath of the crimes, with little to none of the usual attempts at discovering the criminal's motivation. That's usually one of the key problems to be solved in detective fiction. Instead, Atkinson just described what really happened to tie up the loose ends. The detective angle seemed to be a slapdash addition thrown in to pull the stories together, without any actual detecting happening. Perhaps it was because these were all cold cases, but there was no interest in the criminals themselves, just the victims.

Should that really bother me? I haven't read enough detective fiction to know whether that matters, but it just seemed too – okay, fine, I'll say it – sentimental. Call me heartless, whatever; I have not the heartstrings of parenthood that most adults have, but it was too easy to see the tugging for it to work for me.