Wednesday, August 24, 2005

 

Review: Staring at the Sun by Julian Barnes

Writing Style-2.1
Originality-3.1
Plot-0.6
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-0.8
Overall-1.8

This book is a big stinky turd. I barely cared enough to finish it and it’s less than 200 pages. I feel bad about wasting your time reading a review of it. I’ll try to keep it brief.

There’s this dumbshit main character who starts out as a young girl who is amazed by her uncle who I guess she thinks is pretty cool and clever. Another major character in her life is an RAF fighter pilot during the war. He’s been grounded because he’s kind of out of his head and he is staying with her family. He tells her war stories and flying stories and whatnot and she’s pretty amazed by him. Then she grows up and gets married to a guy who’s kind of an a-hole. Through these parts, this girl is unbelievably naïve and stupid. I mean it’s not even realistic. I’m sure that the naïveté is part of the point but for Christ’s sake there’s no need to beat the reader over the head with it.

Then for the last third of this novel, the main character is an old lady. It seems she is somewhat at peace with the world as old people tend to be. And we learn more about her son Gregory who is mainly having a conversation with a super computer. Since it is now something like 2021, there is this supercomputer that knows pretty much everything. Their conversation gets pretty deep about suicide and the point of life and these type things.

So I’m looking back over this summary of the plot and it sounds like it should be really cool, right? But its not. The problem is that this basic outline is really all there is to the novel. The characters and plot never get fleshed out. And the writing is so drab and aimless you don’t really care.

I’m sure that there are all kinds of cool points one could make about this woman’s life. Her wonderment of the world as told by the airplane pilot and her uncle contrasted with her sons search for the meaning of life through asking questions of a supercomputer. The pilot and her son’s fixation with suicide. Her metamorphosis from a naïve young girl to a wise old lady. But there’s just not enough good writing and story to get a firm handhold on any of this. This book is just air, its not even hot air, its just lukewarm turd-smelly air.

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