Thank goodness for Courtney. I had just finished (why, I don’t know) one of the worst books I’ve ever read, and I was looking online at Goodreads for fellow dislikers. Instead, I found a string of five stars and comments like “Gorgeously written,” “Darkly comedic.” I began to think I must have missed something. And, because most of the reviewers are young, judging from the photos next to their names, their positive remarks about the book made me despair—again—how old and out of tune I am with what other people think is funny or meaningful in today’s world. And then I found Courtney, hauling me back from the edge saying, “This book was a total waste of time.”
The title “How to be Eaten” should have put me off from the beginning, but the jacket blurb made it sound interesting. Five women in a basement therapy group. OK, not original, but I like reading about dysfunctional people (hmmm).
One of the main things people admired was the author’s use of fairy tale characters transformed to modern-day young women who, through the storytelling in group therapy, transcend their traumas induced by sadistic misogynists. Throughout the book, I wracked my brain to see how the allusions to the fairy tale characters worked.
Gretel, the most reticent of the group, was supposedly abducted to a house of candy. But since the kidnapper both in fairy tale and “reality” was a female and Hansel, not his sister, was the one being fattened up for stew, this doesn’t seem a case against misogyny. Ruby, who won’t cast off her filthy, pinkish fur coat even in sweltering heat, seems to be literally burdened by her “wolf’ attack rather than triumphant over it. Allusions can help a work be “gorgeously written,” but they have to make sense.
Just when all this sitting around telling life stories is long past being remotely interesting—for both the participants and this reader—the plot appears. The fifth woman, Raina, who is so far the most reasonable of the group, tells her story. As she reveals increasingly outlandish details, in what’s maybe supposed to be the twist in the nonexistent plot, the therapist, a supposedly handsome, compassionate man, exposes his true self in all its bizarre despicableness. One reviewer said I should have seen that coming because in the first few pages of the book, the author spends a lot of time describing his brilliant white teeth. Shame on me—and Courtney.
After a recovery period spent with a work of historical fiction and an Ann Cleeves mystery, I was ready to try again. I had seen books by Sally Rooney on the bestseller list so I read “Beautiful World Where Are You?” The book alternates between chapters of long dissertations analyzing the ills of society and probing the meaning of life—in the form of letters between two longtime women best friends—and detailed descriptions of the relationship each is having with a current boyfriend. I found both kinds of chapters discomfiting. The women’s discussions seemed self-conscious, sort of like those late night, angsty talks in college. There was no reason for me to be present at the other chapters. The women’s realization that love and friendship make a “beautiful world” seemed to me somewhat contrived and, in the “wisdom” of old age, a big DUH!
I wasn’t aware until enlightened by online reviews that using letters was a new “revelatory technique” or that those descriptions of sex that I found gratuitous are “among the most lushly moving in contemporary literary fiction.” Nor was I aware this is what “literary” means.
The obvious takeaway from my reading of these two books is that I’m way too old for them and maybe have become delusional about what’s “literary.” So, OK, I’m not the audience they are written for. Maybe the “bestseller” books that older people like me would “get” could be labeled “OA,” in the same way young adults have their books designated YA. But it makes me sad that, along with social media, TV shows, and movies, contemporary fiction seems to be one more way in which I often feel like an alien in today’s world. I don’t know how much Courtney can help with all that.
Carlene Phillips, author of “A Common History: The Story of Harvard’s Identity,” is a regular feature writer who pauses from time to time to reflect on the humor in the everyday.
