Monday, January 16, 2006

 

Book Review: Tourmaline by Joanna Scott

Writing Style-1.1
Originality-1.5
Plot-1.6
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-0.6
Overall-1.2

Oftentimes, Amy buys books and never reads them. They sit around the house for years and taunt me. They call out, yearning to be read by someone. Sooner or later, I get sucked in. Sometimes, they turn out to be surprisingly good. For instance, Amy bought White Teeth by Zadie Smith and Boomfell by Douglas Hobbie. Other times, they are a waste of time. This was definitely in the latter category.

I don’t see anything that can be gained from reading this book. It’s not interesting, there are no interesting themes, nothing to question, no good characters, extremely mediocre writing. Worthless in every sense.

The book cover says that Joanna Scott won the MacArthur fellowship. That astounds me. It’s really made me second guess the prestige of that prize. I used to tout Cormac McCarthy with, “He’s a MacArthur fellow.”

In Tourmaline, there’s a dude that gets obsessed with finding these precious gemstones called tourmaline and he takes his family to the island of Elba where Napoleon was exiled. And there’s a mystery when some girl goes missing and the dude is accused of it. And there’s a bunch of different perspectives to the mystery from the son, the mother, and so forth.

Eh, why waste your time and mine? This book will be out of print before I can get this post finished probably.

Comments:
Tourmaline might be one of the lesser books J.S. has written. Until you read "Arrogance," you can't really judge her as a writer. Based upon the review you've written, it's clear you haven't read some of her better pieces (Various Antidotes/The Manikin, etc.). "Arrogance," which is one of her first books, also happens to be one of the best books published in the last 50 years. Read it and weep with a form of jealousy the book deserves.
 
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