I suppose it's appropriate that when faced with a gaping hole of three book club choices to deliver I reached out to Goober to see if there was anything he'd been wanting to read. He mentioned Pale Fire, so that went into the mix. (Interestingly, I just searched my email for this email and found another email from me in 2009 asking these guys what they thought was the most chest-thumping book and Pale Fire was one of five I posited [albeit in the American canon, which in retrospect does seem a little strange — and which was pointed out at the time by Goober]; point being, always note the things you didn't pick.)
It's ridiculous: a commentary on a poem that's just bad enough, and a setting with two intertwining worlds in a book that's only just under 300 pages which somehow transforms into a wonderful murder mystery — this genre-busting feat. On top of all that, the thing is funny and entertaining. As rich and juicy as Lolita. I haven't read any other Nabakov. Sorry.
It was funny to return to the put-upon European theme, by which I mean the vision of the cultured European in the absurd milieu of middle America in the 1950s. It's a funny concept in part because it seems strange to conceive of Europeans that way today. The internet has made us all so unremarkably knowledgeable that there's not much to hoard over each other. OK, I just Googled him; that was interesting. I was going to comment on the time elapsed between the fall of Hitler and the publication of Lolita and how it's crazily short because this year is 2015 and it's just 13 years beyond 9/11, which seems like it was just yesterday. On second thought, it's not really important, except to say that 1) life immediately goes on and 2) national or continental tragedies are in the eye of the beholder, and are no more or less impactful than other major historical incidents. [This was about a half hour of randomness while not really watching the Golden State Warriors-Los Angeles Lakers game — wow, am I really watching a turd like this? — and hearing the current season of House of Cards playing on Jen's iPad about five — OK, maybe eight — feet away.]
Nearly everyone who reads Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch says something along the lines of "that book sure needed an editor." I actually didn't mind how long it was (nearly 800 pages), and I say this as someone who really dislikes long books, or at least distrusts them and actively avoids them.
I will say that the thing I was curious about while reading Goldfinch is that middle part in Las Vegas — which was wonderful, don't get me wrong; I loved the ridiculousness of exurban post-real estate bubble (some bubble, at least) Las Vegas — seems tacked on. It obviously moves along the story, so it's not literally tacked on, but it does seem like a different kernel of an idea that was grafted onto the main idea.
Goober brought up an interesting point, which revolved around the supposed timelessness of the story — it's written like ten or fifteen years later, and since it takes place in a post-9/11 world, that means that it's sort of happening in the year 2025 maybe. Like the end of the universe, it's jarring if you think about it too much, so it's best not to think about it.
I am dimly aware of some bad reviews of the book; I don't get that at all and I don't much care either. It actually has an ending, for one, which most writers seem physically incapable of accomplishing. And although there's a sense in there of some kind of fun but maybe convoluted symbols/metaphors for "coming of age" (I think that's the point of the Las Vegas-New York-Europe contrasts and then maybe — maybe? — something about the way Americans grieve versus — maybe? — other people on the planet when it comes to national tragedies), it doesn't distract from what is actually a fun book to read. So whatever.
We had heard about M.P. Cooley's Ice Shear long before its release only because we know Cooley — not the author, but rather the author's sister. When it came out it was the obvious selection for the month. We hoped the Amazon bump from five or ten people would be significant.
It was also, uh, cool to see the Cooley DNA in the writing; I heard Cooley (meaning Cooley's sister, and not the author) in Cooley's writing (meaning Cooley the author and not Cooley's sister). I forget which line but it had something to do with the protagonist bringing people together, which is something we know Cooley excels at (meaning Cooley's sister and not — necessarily — the author).
We rarely read mysteries for book club and I rarely read them myself so it's hard to talk about the craft of the mystery. One thing I noticed (spoiler) though is that on page 108 in the middle, Cooley writes about a key character's missing molar. Being a mystery about methamphetamine dealing, this jumped out at me, I'm pretty sure because of that horrible Green Day video from the mid 1990s:
Also, a very low point in popular music.
Anyway, I couldn't get that strange tidbit out of my end, and when it got to the — spoiler — end of the novel, it vindicated my odd feeling. So I don't know if that was a breadcrumb or even a remnant from an early draft that inadvertently squeaked through. I definitely wondered about it though.
At the meeting we asked Cooley (the sister, not the author) about next steps — everyone had ideas about who should play who. Who knows? We'll see . . .
