The Curator: when you don't enjoy a popular novel
interrogating my own taste by disagreeing with others. Plus movies for the end of summer and a graph that explains it all.
Last week, I wrote in defense of three top-tier novels that critics panned. Today, we are TRL’ing it at your bequest - popular novels I disliked and why.
I always ask myself three things when I have a negative reaction to a popular novel (or any book really): 1). Am I the intended audience? B). Was this book actually bad, or did I just not like it? and iii). Is my negative reaction a result of inherent bias or just [exquisite] personal taste?
If I think there’s any chance I am in the Venn diagram of intended audience for the book in question, I will mentally plot it on my Enjoyment x Quality matrix. Based on where it lands, I might interrogate any hidden bias, which can look like the following:
Did I think about what the book was trying to accomplish as a frame for criticism, or did I just hate it from the jump?
Did I give the style of prose and syntax a chance, especially if it was unfamiliar in any way?
Was this novel written by anyone other than a white American, and did that affect my reaction to it?
etc. etc.
The following novels are not actually bad, poorly written, or unworthy of being liked. I believe I gave all three a chance per above, even if the deck was stacked slightly against them. My purpose is to share what I didn’t like, not shame anyone for their reading choices. If one of the following books is a personal favorite of yours, far be it from me to yuck your yum.
Also. I love to hear differing opinions. I legitimately unsubscribed to someone recently because they listed a few of my favorite books and wrote, “I can’t remember why I didn’t like these,” and I dunno that just grinds my gears - at least give me something to refute, a leg to stand on!! So feel free to go off in the comments - I welcome the challenge.
The more popular you became, the more haters you acquired - Michelle Obama
It is true that the following novels were subject to my more critical eye because of their ubiquity. There was a time when these were absolutely inescapable, and if you hear enough hype, you are bound to be let down. Yet, after my deep self-interrogation tactics, I still came up with the following: these three novels were low on the enjoyment x quality matrix.
Babel by R.F. Kuang
Also Called Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution. I should have loved this for the title alone! It’s normally a story I would be into - heavily academia-coded, about the power of language turned literal like a grown-up Phantom Tollbooth. Robin Swift, a Chinese orphan, is brought to London by a mysterious, hard-edged benefactor to study languages, all in preparation for his admittance to the Oxford School of Translation (Babel). The scholars of Babel use translation as a sort of magic, assisting the British Empire in wielding power over the colonized and taking what is not rightfully theirs. Babel is heavy on themes of racism and colonization, as it should be - it is fine to write a novel exploring these themes! But at almost every turn, at every pause for introspective thought, we were hit with a didacticism so dry and repetitive that I started to wonder if Kuang did not trust us (the reader) to understand anything less overt. While I respect the concept of Babel, it felt like a pedagogical beating. Babel is intelligent, and it knows it, kind of like your annoying older sister (is this review just self-flagellation?). I just wanted more mystery, more subtext to comb through, more fantasy! Instead, I felt a desperation for it to be over. I dug through my annotated copy to find examples of this “pedagogical beating” and found it’s not any single instance but rather the sum of its parts. Each quote below, taken individually, is not so bad, great even! But when an artist doubles down on a message at the expense of plot and character development, then perhaps my whining is justified.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Tomorrow x3 is the story of two friends, Sam and Sadie, who live and breathe the world of video games, eventually becoming partners in a successful venture after graduating college. We watch their collective success and subsequent falling out, a friendship bildungsroman of sorts. The novel is an examination of friendship, love - both romantic and platonic - art, identity, and disability. Unfortunately, the narration felt more like a nature documentary than a love or friendship story of any kind. It lacked a pulse, and the characters felt flat, like the video game characters Sam and Sadie purported to create. I genuinely felt unmoved by their plights. I could almost imagine Zevin moving the characters around a 3D chessboard, inventing internal motivations to match their exterior choices. It also feels sad in a way that is unearned. If there was any kind of joy in Tx3 I might just say, let the people have it! Tom Bissel at the NYT describes it better than I can: “highly creative people struggling, and often failing, to overcome their sex baggage, their mother baggage, their money baggage and identity baggage… [Tomorrowx3] traffic[s] in what could be called whimsicruelty — a smiling, bright-eyed march into pitch-black narrative material…1”. Is it my own brand of whimsicruelty to call this book simply, average?
The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue by V.E. Schwab
Ah Addie La Rue. How torturous it was to be you for 448 pages. This novel is the story of a girl who is invisible. Cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets, Addie wanders the earth for 300 years, full of human needs with no ability to fulfill them. When a boy finally remembers her name, Addie sets off on a quest to free herself from the shackles of her Faustian pact. Unfortunately for us, The beauty and sorrow in Addie’s plight didn’t quite make up for the lack of a compelling plot or character development. The first two-thirds felt like Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows when Harry, Ron, and Hermoine wander the British countryside - a lot of waiting around. Right at the very end, Schwab threw a wrench in the story and revved me, but it was too late! The story was complete! Addie relied on tropes when she had a delicious, inventive twist up her sleeve, one that was only hinted at until the last few pages. What a tragedy Schwab didn't pursue that storyline sooner. I really wanted to like this book but I also really wanted it to be different. In the end, I just didn’t enjoy being in Addie’s head all that much. I’ve read the entire Darker Shade of Magic trilogy and enjoyed it, so I know V.E. Schwab can write. This particular title was just not por moi.
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ALRIGHT, these are my confessions. I know you are dying to see the graph. I love a good graph. Let’s plot this out, shall we?? I added in some other titles that I’ve discussed in previous reading round-ups for comparison.
Agree? Disagree? I would LOVE TO KNOW.
READING 📖→
For whatever reason, Riverhead Books slid into my DMs offering to be my book dealer and sent me my first-ever physical ARC of Rumaan Alam’s new book Entitlement. I have never felt so fancy flashing that thing around the beach where absolutely no one noticed. I loved Leave the World Behind since it’s an unsettling, ambiguous, apocalyptic novel dealing with class, race, and the precarity of societal constructs. I wanted more unsettling class/race stories, and that is what Entitlement has been serving thus far. I am struggling a bit with the stilted prose - it’s almost like overhearing a conversation in media res where both parties consistently cut each other off or fail to finish sentences from a lack of… needing to? Or I’m not really sure. Interested to see where this goes.
I’m in this liminal space where I feel over the summery TBR, but it’s too shiny outside to read the fall stuff. Sneaking chapters of The Nix here and there, but I am finding it hard to pick up, and not for lack of quality. Does this happen to anyone else? The sunk costs are holding me back from pausing on this one but it also feels like wading upstream. Is this a slump??
CONSUMING 📽️🎧→
A series of end-of-summer movie recs to accompany your end-of-summer playlist, all in the fight against a heat-fueled malaise. For all my Xennials, I present to you a mix of nostalgic and new titles that remind us to break out of our ruts and self-imposed limits to experience a little magic because you are never too old to deserve it! Don’t you want to feel like this?
BOOKS IN MY SHOPPING CART 🛒→
This is Why We Lied by Karin Slaughter - A NEW WILL TRENT YA’LL!! I am not there yet in the series but very much looking forward to having endless content from Queen Slaughter.
Swallow the Ghost by Eugenie Montague - an unconventional murder mystery of nesting-doll stories about the impact of violence and how we define truth. Very promising.
This new illustrated version of Carmilla by J. Sheridan La Fanu just in time for (say it with me) spooky season!
BOOK NEWS & RESTACKS 📰→
If you read two things this week, let it be one of these Substacks
Top 11 Places to Read, Ranked by
. Like I am honestly mad I didn’t think of this myself.- ‘s recommendations for Women in Translation Month. Martha has opened my eyes to so many wonderful translated works I have to credit her every other damn newsletter. 🖤
AND CATS 🐈⬛→
They actually sleep like this 🥲
LET’S CHAT 👻→
Tell me a popular novel that you didn’t get along with - I know you've got one!
Are you excited for Starbucks pumpkin season, Y/N?
What are you reading currently, and is it any good?
In Case You Missed It 🖤
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See you around the bookshelf!
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/books/review/tomorrow-and-tomorrow-and-tomorrow-gabrielle-zevin.html
Enjoyment x Quality matrix almost made me squeal with glee!!! I love a good graph, maybe I'll map out my 2024 reads this way.
Love to take in your critical analysis & have to jump in to say I have similar qualms with RF Kuang's writing (I haven't read Babel though, just Yellowface). It's good, it's smart, it's entertaining, it's just obvious to me that she doesn't trust the reader's interpretive ability. Which I mean, maybe it's a valid fear, but it's at the expense of enjoyability for sure.
Some amazing responses here! I know this one may be controversial, but 'A Little Life.' I finished it, but it did not work for me at all. 'A Man in Full' by Tom Wolfe is a book I detested so much I didn't read fiction for almost five years. Now it's a TV show, lol.