The only son of an expert single skier and ski instructor, growing up in the 1940s and 50s New Hampshire, the first person singular narrator of this tale is parented mainly by his aunts. But he hates skiing. He is 14 as the novel starts in the 1950s, and is an aspiring writer. Later he becomes an expert wrestler and snowshoer at Exeter boys school, in New Hampshire.
While there are many references to classical novels, the writer is so obsessed with sex as to be nauseating. When not describing explicit, unrealistic, casual, sexual encounters including some involving underage children, with everything from fisting, and bestiality to what amounts to much of the Kama Sutra, incest and cross-dressing, he sees ghosts of his deceased demented grandfather crawling around in ill-fitting diapers. There are few pages without the foulest language imaginable, in the first 200 pages. And there is more vulgarity in latter chapters. The grandfather’s is not the only description of scattered excrement, nor of seeing ghosts.
I am not sure how much of this is autobiographical as it does feature New England schools where he grew up, New York, and the Iowa Writers Workshop, which he attended and where he taught.
The 30 page screen play included in the first part of Act III, is total nonsense. The historical record of the anti-war protests opposing the Vietnam War may be accurate but seem disconnected to the story if there is a story at all. The East Village hippie generation experimentation with production of pornographic movies also seems unconnected.. And what is a calf fracture?
Dozens of movies are rated by the outliers, most of them unfamiliar to me. I read almost to the half-way mark, a total of 410 pages of this door stopper, long enough to learn who the father of the narrator is, but by then I had had enough of this nonsense. Glad to see that the Economist magazine was ready to be downloaded, I will not finish this book, will not rate it, and will not count it among the 97 or so books I have read this year. This was very disappointing as I did at least somewhat enjoy one of this American/Canadian writer’s books, ie. Last Night in Twisted River, although the next one was also quite disappointing.This nonsensical one is going to the William’s Court Lending library.
Thanks, Alana.
The Passionate Reader 