Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross
My rating: 4/5 cats
oh, Mr. Peanut – you were so close to earning a five-star cat rating from me!! and this is probably my failing rather than any fault of the book, in a way, because i had unrealistic expectations based on just sheer enthusiastic nothing. the book starts out so strong, that when it started going mildly wrong for me, i felt betrayed, and maybe took its departure from where i wanted it to be a little personally.* (i call this House of Leaves syndrome) i had been shelving this book for at least a month, thinking to myself, “cool cover”, before i finally read what it was about (due to the enthusiasm of jasmine, courtney and sabiel) then my freaking head almost exploded. it sounded amazing! the first thing i thought was “oh, murdered wife, spiraling narrative, loopy digressions; it will be like The Seducer which is a perfect book!”** this, too, will be a perfect book! and i read the first few pages and fell in love.
and for a while, everything was just rosy.
but then…and it’s nothing that is wrong with the book or flawed, necessarily, but it was…imperfect. to me.
the unevenness of the pacing kind of threw me a little. the hastroll bits (which seem to be everybody’s least favorite) were not given nearly enough “screen-time” to develop, while alice and david in hawaii seemed to go on forever. and when the sheppard plotline kicked into high gear, i forgot everything else and lost myself in their thread. and that’s no small feat – to create discrete characters that the reader is engaged enough in that each story, when being told, becomes the story. (or, me-as-reader, anyway – you hastroll-haters!)
it’s great, it is a really great book, please understand this. and there are already some excellent reviews out there, which point out the strengths and flaws better than i could:
i am glad that i managed to fit in two viewings of inception before/while reading this, because my “what the fuck” and my “yeah, but what about…” muscles are definitely working overtime. i will have to read this again (and gladly) to get all the pieces in order, with the doublings and the echoes and the foreshadowing etc.
he is an amazing writer. i fully expect his next book to be a five-star cat-worthy book. this one is “only” very very very good.
and i don’t want to say much more because a lot of what is glorious about this book is the discovery of it. so just ignore my bullshit quibbles and read it.
* although i was recently told by some douchebag on this site, “sorry darling, you can’t always get what you want.” which darn it all, it seems i still haven’t learned.
** shit, i just noticed i only gave The Seducer 4 stars cats…really, karen? in my memory, it is perfect. see how little i can be trusted?
