Something Rotten is only the second book I’ve read by Jasper Fforde. The other was The Big Over Easy, which I liked quite a bit (it was one that I picked up from the ‘3 for the price of 2’ table, where I can invariably find two books that I’ve been wanting to get for ages and can’t for the life of me find a third, so I end up rounding it out with one that I’ve never seen before in my life). It wasn’t, however, in the Thursday Next series, so I lacked a bit — well, all, really — of the context and background of Something Rotten.

That being said, it was a fun and easy read. It’s the kind of book that is best enjoyed, at least for me, by giving up on trying to figure it out and just going with the flow. I’m not sure that I could tell you much about it that would help clarify anything related to plot or structure or characters even now after having read it. But I can say that I enjoyed it and it made me laugh out loud once or twice, which is not as easy for a book to accomplish as you might think.

I’ll request the previous three books from the library, which will allow me to clarify which parts were jokes I just didn’t get and which confused aspects were a result of having read the book out of its sequential order.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards, was another book that caught my eye at the bookstore and didn’t pan out for me. I don’t know what I was expecting, really. The plot was as advertised: doctor delivers his own babies, and gives away the one that has Down’s syndrome without telling his wife. From there, though, the novel falls flat. The characters are incredibly two-dimensional, and the standard opportunities for redemption and growth aren’t present.

As trite as it might be, I read novels with singularly depressing plots in order to see the characters dig deep, search their souls, struggle, and rise to the challenge. I don’t really need to read novels with singularly depressing plots wherein characters lash out, bury their anger, wallow in their guilt, take their secrets to their graves, and drink their way through their sad lives. Really, I don’t. I kept reading because I had a desire to know what happened — my Achilles heel when it comes to novels, I just can’t bear to not know the end in the vast majority of books I read. Unfortunately, the part of the story that would have been the most engaging — what each of the characters does with the truth once revealed — was only a minimal and sketchily rendered bit at the end. The rest of the novel is about how the concealment of such a core truth ruins lives and relationships. Which can be the basis of a powerful novel, it’s just not the basis of a novel I wanted to read.

In the end, this novel is a sad story of the type I am trying not to read as much of, perfect for wallowing in the knowledge of how sad the world is and how people’s choices mess them up. If that’s your thing, go to town.

I was disappointed by The Double Bind, by Chris Bohjalian. I have been awed by the strength of several of his past novels — Midwives, of course, but also Trans-Sister Radio and Buffalo Soldier — but I don’t find the quality of the stories to be consistent. I’m sure that’s more a reflection of me and which types of narratives I enjoy. Nonetheless, I have this sense with Bohjalian that when he’s on, he’s a narrative genius, and when he’s not, he’s Wally Lamb.

In this book, he wasn’t on. I’m going to veer from my general path of not spoiling books for future readers and talk about the plot. All of Bohjalian’s books hinge on tragedy, and frequently violence. In each, The Truth is contested, and in early books, this uncertainty is highlighted through the use of shifting first person narrative. It’s precisely because there is no single version of key events that the violence is usually not described in lurid detail, and this makes his books more readable for me. I probably should have put The Double Bind to the side when it became clear that the tragedy involved was a violent rape, which would have been when the jacket flap informed me that the main character rode her bike into the woods, had a terrible experience, and retreated from her friends and family, using photography as her only solace. Hmm, I wonder what the terrible experience could have been? Still, despite my distaste for violence against women as the hook on which to hang novels, I expected that Bohjalian was unlikely to treat the events in a graphic or voyeuristic fashion, and that aspect is true.

Nonetheless, I again should have stopped reading when Daisy Buchanan appeared in the narrative. Here I feel obligated to say: I don’t find The Great Gatsby to be the pinnacle of American literary achievement of the 20th century. I don’t even like the book very much. At all. I find the characterizations flat, the plot preposterous, and the ‘social commentary’ not witty or cutting or poignant or anything much at all. To revert 17 years in my analysis for a moment, the whole novel strikes me as boring and stupid. So, reading a novel that hinges inextricably on The Great Gatsby, was, for lack of a more sophisticated word, annoying. It’s true that The Double Bind is not a novel about The Great Gatsby: like Bohjalian’s other works, it’s a novel about loss, grief, dissociation, and healing. It just happens to use The Great Gatsby as the major lens through which these themes are explored.

So, what can I say? The novel is beautifully executed, as are all of his novels. I just wasn’t the audience, which I was too stubborn to accept as a reason to just take the book back to the library unread.

I picked up The Patron Saint of Liars, by Ann Patchett, at the library, as I’d enjoyed Bel Canto and not previously read any of her other stuff. I was a bit disappointed, truthfully. I know it’s a debut novel, and I tried to give it the tender consideration that such a thing deserves. Nonetheless, it fell flat for me. The changing viewpoints didn’t flow as well as in her later writing, which was a shame. Granted, there aren’t many writers who achieve excellence with a shifting first person narrative (several, but not all, of Chris Bohjalian‘s works do).

The book didn’t grab me. I kept waiting for the plot to become compelling, and it didn’t. As when I read Three Junes, I found myself treating each section of the book as a short story, strung together by shared characters. Perhaps that’s how Patchett meant the novel to be read, in which case, bravo! I don’t enjoy that narrative structure much; more when the vignettes are shorter, as with The House on Mango Street or The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing. Still, I mention those books as examples only; I didn’t love either of them, and I much prefer a short story collection with a theme such as Interpreter of Maladies or Strange Pilgrims, both of which are excellent reads.

In a nutshell, the novel is well-written and the prose flows. However, the plot didn’t engage me and the structure is one I find off-putting. So there you have it.