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Bezig met laden... Topics of Conversation (2020)door Miranda Popkey
Debut Authors (5) Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. Rounded up from 2.5 stars. This reads like a transcription, which I find compelling only because it is an unusual way to write a novel. I have always wanted to find a piece of fiction that truly mimics all of the stutters and missteps and nonverbal cues we make when navigating conversations. However, this missed for me. I think she makes important points about the mercurial qualities of selfhood and relationships, and she writes them well, but the narrator doesn’t have much of an identity or even a personality. I felt Popkey revealed depth all of the characters—and no character exists beyond a chapter or two, really—EXCEPT in her narrator, and that was frustrating. I did not finish this book. Not because of bad writing, not because there aren't stories to tell, but because the stories weren't holding my interest, were depressing, and I just didn't want to read them anymore. It isn't a long book, I probably would've forced myself to finish (I was over halfway through) in younger days, but I am too old to read something that I don't want to. I don’t like panning books as I think authors pour what they have and sometimes it just doesn’t connect with a certain reader. I read as many as I could and then realized I wasn’t the audience for this slim book. The first one on rape fantasy should have been the indicator, but I pressed on. Sadly, not for me.
...a searing and cleverly constructed novel and a fine indication of what’s to come from this promising author. Onderscheidingen
Miranda Popkey's first novel is about desire, disgust, motherhood, loneliness, art, pain, feminism, anger, envy, guilt--written in language that sizzles with intelligence and eroticism. The novel is composed almost exclusively of conversations between women--the stories they tell each other, and the stories they tell themselves, about shame and love, infidelity and self-sabotage--and careens through twenty years in the life of an unnamed narrator hungry for experience and bent on upending her life. Edgy, wry, shot through with rage and despair, Topics of Conversation introduces an audacious and immensely gifted new novelist. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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First as a young woman babysitting and talking to a friend's mother who is relating the story of her response to a rape by her first husband. Next, the narrator's own sexual violence with a professor, then on to a time when she hooks up with a stranger, a scary business man wearing mid-level suit and tie, in his room where he keeps her prone under his huge, hairy hand for twenty-minutes, no sex. There is a realistic witness account of Norman Mailer's behavior toward his wife, Adele. We move on through other experiences of the narrator, her friends, her mother, all of which present a passive attitude, rape fantasy, and finally, single motherhood. But it wasn't the topics that held me rapt so much as the storytelling, the narrator's art as she says. I couldn't stop listening and each of the topics of conversation offered enough to keep me enthralled. I also liked the boozy descriptions, the sunsetting sky "the color of Macallan's scotch straight, no water. The rosiness matching a glass of summer rose." And always the bourbon in the coffee thermos, or the hidden bottle, the gin-and-tonics mounting as her mom pours yet another drink and talks about sex with her Freudiand therapist who "cured" her of her frigidity. The book begs for a book club conversation. ( )