The Writing Class
I read this book because my bosses wife read it & loved it, so I expected to as well.... but I didn't.
For me their were only two sub-stories (although there were supposed to be three I think), but neither of them really took off. I'm also not sure whether the stories were supposed to be first or third person, because they kept awkwardly flipping.
The relationships between all the characters also seemed very awkward. Nobody was friends, but they pretended to be friends whilst silently wanting to leave the situation. What kind of way is that to live life?
I also thought that the book was too descriptive. For some (most?) people that won't be an issue, but I get bored with the wordy-ness. An example of this is "The authorial voice could break in at this point and urge caution, but not so strongly that the lover loses his stride. While the bodies writhe and thrust in the striated light, he might even indulge in a little meditation on the writing of sex and how to go about it. Prehaps he would muse that more than any other human activity sex may be as erotic as it can be numbing, as amusing as it is tragic, as breeding of loathing as it is of love. He would debate whether his attention should alight on that quivering droplet or that gleaming gland, or whether the author should leave the room altogether" (page 108). For me, reading words sentences like that was too much, too often.
I didn't think this book was a total write off & would recommend it to certain people (I'm lending the book to my mum this weekend), but I won't be reading it again.
