One of the nice things about being sick is that you get a lot of reading done. In the last ten days I finally finished Annie Ernaux’s The Years, which I found more impressive than enjoyable, her evocatively detailed recording of the past marred, for me, by her jaded, joyless voice. I read Richard Russo’s memoir Elsewhere (interesting but repetitive, more about his mother than it is about him) and Donald Hall’s Life Work, a memoirish meditation on work, which Hall enjoyed so much that, evenings watching Red Sox games, he couldn’t wait till morning found him back at his desk.
I started reading Penelope Lively’s memoir Dancing Fish and Ammonites (all these paperbacks, with the exception of Ernaux’s, picked up at Bookwise in Boca or Big Apple Books in Fort Lauderdale) and quit reading, after about a hundred pages, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. The title had me dreading a grim, dystopian novel and instead I got a boring, contemporary novel, filled with unpleasant characters in the music industry. It was hailed, and richly awarded, for its structure – separate sections focusing on different characters and told from different points of view – but I found that initially confusing. Was it employed to distract from the less than scintillating writing? I can deal with unpleasant characters – be they John Updike’s or Nancy Lemann’s – as long as I can take pleasure in the sentences.
