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Aug. 28th, 2003 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
decemberthirtyI'm still working on Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister and I'm not really enjoying any more than I was the last time I wrote. I fairly disappointed, since this is the first book being read by my book club, and I had such high hopes... I just hope that reading a not-so-good book doesn't negatively impact the development of the book club itself.
I think there are two main problems and are preventing me from liking the book. Unfortunately, they're both fairly major. The first, and perhaps biggest, problem is that Maguire really does a terrible job with characterization. All of the peripheral characters seem like nothing more than collections of stereotypes and the main characters are not much better. Also, the characters opinions, motivations, and feelings seem to simply appear and disappear at random. Maguire never gives us any of the essentials of a character's nature, we never get the chance to know them as people, so their feelings and actions seem to be based on nothing. Iris provides a great example of this problem. As far as I can tell, she had never picked up a pencil or seen a painting before arriving in Holland and yet we are expected to believe that within a few weeks of being there she's found her hidden talent and can't possibly bear to be out of the studio. Maybe this would be believable if Maguire filled us in on any of the stages of this transition, but he doesn't. He simply states these facts and then expects them to spontaneously form the emotional basis for his story. And it's not only with Iris that this happens, it can actually be seen in all the major characters that I've encountered in the 250 pages that I've read so far.
The other problem is that Maguire really fails to appropriately integrate his story into its historical setting. A good work of historical fiction should make you feel just immersed in the time and place in which it takes place. My personal gold standard for historical novels is A Dead Man in Deptford by Anthony Burgess, which managed to seem incredibly thoroughly researched and yet to effortlessly and seamlessly recreate Marlowe's England. Not only that, but Burgess managed to address numerous facets society and to create a book that was at once deeply engrossing and highly informative. I realize that it may be rather unfair to compare poor Maguire to Burgess, but nonetheless, he falls far short of this standard. A novel set is 17th century Holland should be fascinating, what with the bizarreness of the tulip craze that was going on, and the political intrigues happening all over Europe, the art scene, the plague, and all sorts of other fascinating things that could have been used to really enrich his story. Maguire works in many of these elements, but he makes them seem flat and superficial. In fact, his treatment of his historical setting is rather similar to his treatment of his characters. He gives no background information, and events seem to happen for no particular reason. Why does Iris love art? Because he says so. Why does the tulip market crash? Because he says so. It just doesn't work for me.
Well, if nothing else, it should be interesting to see what the other folks in the book club have to say about it.
I think there are two main problems and are preventing me from liking the book. Unfortunately, they're both fairly major. The first, and perhaps biggest, problem is that Maguire really does a terrible job with characterization. All of the peripheral characters seem like nothing more than collections of stereotypes and the main characters are not much better. Also, the characters opinions, motivations, and feelings seem to simply appear and disappear at random. Maguire never gives us any of the essentials of a character's nature, we never get the chance to know them as people, so their feelings and actions seem to be based on nothing. Iris provides a great example of this problem. As far as I can tell, she had never picked up a pencil or seen a painting before arriving in Holland and yet we are expected to believe that within a few weeks of being there she's found her hidden talent and can't possibly bear to be out of the studio. Maybe this would be believable if Maguire filled us in on any of the stages of this transition, but he doesn't. He simply states these facts and then expects them to spontaneously form the emotional basis for his story. And it's not only with Iris that this happens, it can actually be seen in all the major characters that I've encountered in the 250 pages that I've read so far.
The other problem is that Maguire really fails to appropriately integrate his story into its historical setting. A good work of historical fiction should make you feel just immersed in the time and place in which it takes place. My personal gold standard for historical novels is A Dead Man in Deptford by Anthony Burgess, which managed to seem incredibly thoroughly researched and yet to effortlessly and seamlessly recreate Marlowe's England. Not only that, but Burgess managed to address numerous facets society and to create a book that was at once deeply engrossing and highly informative. I realize that it may be rather unfair to compare poor Maguire to Burgess, but nonetheless, he falls far short of this standard. A novel set is 17th century Holland should be fascinating, what with the bizarreness of the tulip craze that was going on, and the political intrigues happening all over Europe, the art scene, the plague, and all sorts of other fascinating things that could have been used to really enrich his story. Maguire works in many of these elements, but he makes them seem flat and superficial. In fact, his treatment of his historical setting is rather similar to his treatment of his characters. He gives no background information, and events seem to happen for no particular reason. Why does Iris love art? Because he says so. Why does the tulip market crash? Because he says so. It just doesn't work for me.
Well, if nothing else, it should be interesting to see what the other folks in the book club have to say about it.
