Red Leaves by Paullina Simons
My rating: 2/5 cats
some books should remain out of print, left to molder and rot without curious readers tracking them down and disturbing the wisdom of nature. even ones that have saucy insets like this:
scandalous!
if you had told me that this book was written by an alien from the planet glorp with no familiarity with human behavior, i would have no trouble believing it.
if you told me this was a nanowrimo book, written in one month, without proofreading or author-sleep, i would understand.
if this were the work of a child or a dog who thinks he’s people, i could forgive a lot of it.
but.
it’s not.
it’s just not very good, and occasionally, it is terrible. this is a very distorted depiction of how humans behave and interact, and it is so unintentionally funny in places, i almost feel bad for it. and i am also confused – there is a big reveal at the end of the book that i had taken as a given from the beginning. and then about halfway through, i was like – “oh, wait, are we not supposed to have guessed this yet?” because it was so obvious, that i was sure it was one of those things where the reader is made aware of something that the characters have yet to figure out. but, no. it was supposed to be this big surprise, and when she did reveal it, i felt quite embarrassed, like when ricky martin came out and everyone was like, “duh.”
i don’t actually feel too bad trashing this, because it is out of print, and the novelist has a successful career writing historical fiction that is well received, so i can just gently rib this book as a youthful indiscretion, like me that one time at that club i got snowed in at in providence.
so many pre-meyer meyerisms, too – why is everyone panting all the time?? it is disconcerting. is the air that thin in new hampshire?? i am concerned because my dad will be moving there, and i want to make sure he will be able to breathe without panting all the time. that was the real mystery: where has all the air gone?
oh, god, and this:
“She lay there naked in the snow?”
“Yes.” Frankie shrugged. “I know it sounds weird. But she was a philosophy major. There are men in Tibet who pierce their bodies or eat swords or walk on hot coals and don’t get hurt. She had this gift. She successfully steeled her body against the cold.”
DID YOU KNOW THAT BEING A PHILOSOPHY MAJOR GAVE YOU MAGICAL POWERS???
young’uns – take note.
there are so many hilarious conversations, confrontations, inexplicable decisions, almost NOTHING in this book makes sense. it is a hoot, but it’s not painful to read or anything, it is just sometimes, you will come to a passage and want to smack your forehead a little in groaning glee.
i suppose it is my own damn fault, this book was safely out of print until a readers’ advisory assignment for readalikes for secret history led me to stumble upon it, and after learning that the nypl had but one copy of this book in a large print format, which had gone missing, i should have taken no to mean no.
but i can’t do that.
and after reading elizabeth’s review of another book by the same author which you can see right here, i somehow was made an offer to get this book sent to me by jen – who has already sent me a crappy movie in the course of our friendship, so it was time to be sent a crappy book. our relationship is crap-based.
and i love jen for getting it to me.
and i loved reading it, if mostly for the wrong reasons.
because, really, it’s not THAT bad.
but it kind of is.
and it is NOTHING like secret history.
