Generally, I don’t post about other reviews, particularly those appearing in the major papers, because I know you’ll find them on your own if you’re interested. Ron Charles’s recent review in the Washington Post of Laurie Sheck’s debut novel, A Monster’s Notes, is so compelling, however, that I feel an unusual need to cite to it. Charles describes A Monster’s Notes as “a baffling 500-page book” composed of “thousands of little scraps stitched together: bits of letters, journal entries, newspaper clippings, marginalia, interviews, dreams, lists, Web pages, lesson plans and translated passages, full of additions and words x'd out.”It sounds like a challenging read:
[A Monster’s Notes is] a fire hose of erudition that sprays out allusions to 3,000 years of history, science, philosophy and literature, the kind of novel that keeps you chained to Wikipedia unless you're on a first-name basis with Boethius, Cao Xuequin, Dante, Marco Polo, Locke, Diogenes, Maimonides and especially the Romantic poets, along with their parents, lovers, children and pets. I'm sure somewhere there's a reader smart enough (or dishonest enough) to enjoy this novel in all its rich allusiveness, but I spent the entire ordeal lurching along about 50 IQ points behind.
The rest of the review is equally entertaining. I’m almost tempted to read the book.
3 comments:
That sounds like quite a challenge!
Well now you've got me curious enough to go check it out. Thanks for the lead
This book does indeed sound very strange. I will have to check out the full review of this one.
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