The Whole World by Emily Winslow
My rating: 3/5 cats
brrring brrring…
hello? i am phoning in a book review. this cool?
i am just not feeling inspired by this book. it was fine, but it really seemed to be trying too hard on one hand, and then getting careless and plot-holey on the other.
there is just…too much. there are all these storylines that are provocative but are quickly dropped, or seem to only exist because they are supposed to be intriguing, but when they are all together in one book and not really explored, it is just the literary equivalent of empty calories. do red herrings have empty calories?
here—these are all suitable alternate titles for the subplots of these dysfunctional characters or harlequin presents titles: who’s your mommy? lesbian aunt likes pears. millionaires for a month. loving my brother’s lover. older-woman barnyard seduction. View Spoiler » etc. etc. every character has some sort of Big Dramatic Thing in their past that might have an effect on their overall personality, sure, but seems to be used here just to give them something unusual in their construction, but not necessarily functional. like wings on an ostrich.
ain’t going nowhere.
it would have been perfectly fine without all that clutter. or to have less dramatic clutter. there are more realistic reasons for liv to be the way she is. and i still don’t understand how polly’s past affected her in that particular way. gretchen—also bizarre. these characters just don’t work for me. and with a tighter storyline, i could have overlooked it and just settled in for a fun and unrealistic mystery novel. but…yeah, no dice.
and one last time for those of you not paying attention—one book, five narrators. we have been here before. just because some of them are british and some of them are american, and some of them are boys and some of them are girls; just because their bodies and backgrounds are different does not mean that their voices are automatically distinguishable unless you write ’em that way. yes, the british ones say things like “bloody idiot,” bravo. not good enough.
this book wasn’t bad enough for me to waste any energy trashing it, but it wasn’t great. and as a secret history readalike—well—it was not one.
i have to eat food. i think that is more important right now than thinking about this book any further.
brian—there are a ton of birds in this book. a ton.
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