Weekend Reads: The Lesser Bohemians

A chance meeting in a pub leads to a story over the course of a year that fundamentally changes two people's lives and the lives of those around them. In The Lesser Bohemians, a young theater student arrives in London ready to explore an independent life. She happens to meet an actor who is older than her, and they seem to have an attraction that doesn't fade. Throughout the year, their relationship is explored and so are their pasts.

Although this is categorized as literary fiction, at the core of it this is simply a romance novel that explores the relationship between two people who appear broken, and for most of the book seem to be wrong for each other. What makes it suddenly turn into a literary novel is only the narrative voice used by the author. From the very first page, it is stilted, choppy and in some cases completely unintelligible (in addition, the entire novel never uses quotation marks for direct quotes, which annoys me to no end). The reason the author is probably doing this is to show the uncertainty and eventual growth of the narrator, however, having the first 100 or so pages written in this way will turn a lot of people off from finishing the book, even though the story underneath is simple and somewhat interesting.

The other issue with this novel is that the narrator is just not interesting. She's a kid sleeping with an older guy—although she learns a lot about herself through the relationship, she just ends up looking starry-eyed and smitten at the end, much like a eighteen-year-old would in that situation. What was actually interesting in the book was Stephen's story (which, by the way, you don't even find out his or Eily's name until two-thirds of the way in the book), his background, the abuse in his childhood, all of his secrets and how he became the man that Eily met. Eily's hinting of her own dark past doesn't really come out and doesn't pull you in like Stephen's story. While parts of the book are interesting, the writing style and the lack of something that makes Eily unique to tell her story may keep a lot of readers away.

Check out more information on this title and more information on the author. 

*I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Weekend Reads: The Lauras

An escape. A road trip. A pilgrimage to understand one and discover the other. In The Lauras, a woman is faced with the need to get away from her life, and in doing so pulls her child Alex with her. The relationship between mother and child grows and develops as they hit the open road, both trying to find different things while still holding onto the best parts of their individual pasts.

Although the story is told through Alex, it is Alex's mom's stories that are prominent throughout the book. These stories about all the different Lauras (a generic name given to all of the transformative women in Ma's life) are sort of destinations on the map across the United States. In each stop that the pair make, there is a quest or a task that Ma must complete before she and her child can move onto the next phase of the journey. It is through these stories that Alex learns about Ma and her childhood, and intertwines Alex's own story of growing up in the present. All of Alex's needs and all of Ma's secrets play a delicate tug of war to provide plenty of interesting moments in the novel.

The one aspect of this book that seems to settle in the background until on a few occasions it is brought to the forefront is the fact that Alex wants to remained untethered by gender identification. The key to reading the story of Alex is to push yourself past the assumptions you make while you are reading the story. I know that I found it difficult to not put Alex in a box, based on the actions Alex took and things Alex thought throughout the novel. I had a clear idea in my mind who Alex was at the beginning, but as the novel went on, it morphed and I turned out second guessing my original thoughts about who Alex could be. I even skimmed the novel after reading it to see if the author provided any hint as to how Alex couldn't fall into at least one gender stereotype to give away the answer, but Taylor was great at crafting Alex the way Alex wanted to be portrayed. 

That's the whole idea of Alex's side of the story--if you want to respect Alex's narrative, you must give up trying to figure out whether Alex is male or female. Alex doesn't want it to matter to the story, so it shouldn't matter to the reader. With or without it, it's a good story of family, of adventure and the need to know whether the definition of home is within a place or within yourself.

Interested in reading The Lauras for yourself? You can find out more information about the book from Penguin Random House. You can also learn more about Sara Taylor by reading her bio.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

You Know That Whole NaNo Thing? Yeah, About That...

Writing a 50k in 30 days. That was such a cute idea, wasn't it? Unfortunately, this has been an off year for me with less than 3000 words written and we're beyond the halfway point of the month. But it's not all bad.

One of the reasons my NaNo novel is stuck in park is because the annual freelancer's dry spell hasn't quite settled in just yet. We'll give that one a small shout of glee. The other reason? Another story idea has come up. Poof! Right out of thin air, and I can't stop thinking about it. It is another that goes into the literary fiction category, and I'm intrigued by it. I'm going to respect my current NaNo project and not start on it until December, but I really can't wait. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Anyone else inching closer to the NaNoWriMo finish line?