TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Chapter 1 (this post)
- Chapter 2
- Chapters 3 and 4
(special thanks to KennyMan666 for the much better title)
I decided to start this project for a number of reasons. One, I realized that recently I have been reading far less than I used to. When I was a kid I used to be buried in books of all kinds, in much the same way most kids of that age would be obssessed with television or video games. Nowadays I hardly touch books, mainly because I have so much schoolwork to do, but with the summer approaching, I figured I might as well combine my love of literature and the solitary yet connected pull of the Internet and start a sort of review log.
Rather than set up a separate blog to start with, though, I decided to post a thread on the TASvideos Off Topic forum because I want this initial review to be a sort of test run. I figured that the best way to get some early reception about my writing style would be to post in a forum that knows me well enough, rather than start a tiny blog with no connections and no exposure. I want this to be a series, reviewing each of the neglected books that stand on my shelf, usually the ones I buy from Indigo or Chapters or Half-Price Books on occasion. It might give me a reason to keep reading frequently.
So before I bore all of you to tears, let me lay down some rules here:
* I will be reading this book chapter by chapter, with a review for each chapter coming once every few days. At this point I probably won't have a defined schedule.
* The books I will be reading will all be fiction, and are usually obscure or out of print. On the off chance you happen to have read the book, please, for the love of God, do NOT spoil anything. I fucking mean it, people. NO SPOILERS. If I know anything major about the books beforehand, I think it would hurt the quality of my reviews significantly. If you feel that you must ABSOLUTELY talk about something spoilery, please put it in spoiler tags.
* The tone of these reviews will usually be lighthearted. If for some reason you are allergic to literary analysis, absurd humour and/or lolcats, you have been warned.
* Feel free to post comments in the thread. If you're lucky, I might even join in on the discussion.
* I'll be using the OP as a sort of table of contents once I have multiple chapter reviews up, for easy navigation.
* SERIOUSLY, DUDES, NO FUCKING SPOILERS.
I picked Seven Moves up today at Half Price Books because I was bored. It was only five dollars and I liked the cover: an empty purple suitcase with a solid brown background. The blurbs on the back cover pegged it as some sort of thriller, "a thrilling psychological journey that takes you through a dizzying sweep of emotions" and all that. Fine, I can dig that. A Boston Globe blurb even compared the author Carol Anshaw to John Updike, of all people. So I figured, why not? Let's see where this rabbit runs.
In the first chapter of Seven Moves, not much really happens, but we are introduced to our protagonist, therapist Christine Snow, as she spends her day listening to her overly dramatic patients at work. Also lesbians. So what are we waiting for? Let's get started.
CHAPTER 1
The book opens with an epigraph from the song Aimless Love by John Prine:
Seven Moves wrote:
Love has no mind / It can't spell unkind / It's never seen a heart shaped like a valentine
As cheesy as that sounds, it seemed to gel with what I'd read on the back cover. Early points already for not tacking on an out of context quote.
The chapters aren't named, and each one is prefaced by clipart some sort of filmstrip. I'm guessing it's a 35mm camera, maybe? It's certainly important enough to warrant what little art there is in this book.
Anyway, we start the book in third-person limited narrative, and immediately get a rather strange view into our protagonist's mind:
Seven Moves wrote:
Christine Snow tries to ignore the simmering pain at the small of her back. A little commercial flashes up in her imagination. Dancing ibuprofen in top hats.
Someone needs to photoshop that mental image, stat.
Christine, or Chris as she is referred to in the narrative, is a therapist of some sort, and she is currently having a session with a patient, one Rosario Delacruz. Supposedly Rosario is doing quite well for herself, but is seeing Christine due to some problems with her personal life, her current boyfriend being an IRS auditor with TMJ named Tony.
Seven Moves wrote:
The relationship Rosario has with him, as she tells it, is a rush from high to low, then back up again. The highs are mostly about the sex, which is, according to her, sensually religious, approaching on its knees the meaning of life. "I weep the tears of angels," she has told Chris, then adds, dabbing at the air with her Kleenex, "You wouldn't understand." In Rosario's belief structure, gringas do it with the lights off, shower after, leave their lovers' backs unmarked.
This is the start of a recurring theme throughout this chapter, and possibly the rest of the book: sex as a reason for being. I can't exactly comment on this with any experience, being a 20-year-old hermetic virgin, but I find it striking how much of a role sensuality plays not just in Rosario's life, but Chris' other patients and eventually, Chris herself.
But enough about that. Chris is trying to convince Rosario to leave this Tony asshole, especially since Rosario has actually come to therapy sessions with fresh bruises on her face. Jesus Christ. Could this possibly get any worse?
Seven Moves wrote:
"It is a terrible shame I feel," she whispers. "As if I am the one who did this to myself."
What the fuck, woman. Victim blaming?! (On a side note, it's never explicitly mentioned whether the bruises are from her wild sex life or actual domestic abuse, but Chris, along with the reader, assumes the latter)
I really don't think Rosario is that well-written of a character, but then again, I don't think we'll be seeing much of her later on. This is, after all, an establishing character moment: a scene, irrelevant to the plot, which intends to exhibit the new character's faults, strengths, limits, etc. In this case, Rosario's melodrama is used to separate Chris' major difference from your archetypal psychiatrist:
Seven Moves wrote:
People think that shrinks are dispassionate, detached from the misery of their clients, concerned but in a measured way that also allows them to surreptitiously check their watches, hum a catchy tune inside their heads. But for Chris the problem is of an opposite cast. She has great difficulty putting aside the concerns of her clients even between sessions, placing their cares on some recessed shelf of benign neglect, in some cool, damp keeper bin.
...
Beyond this direct, professional analysis, their continuing dramas invade her thoughts, sometimes her dreams, and often her supposedly free hours with their messages on her voice mail, tearful or tight, nagging at her until she can return the calls, get things at least a little calmed down or smoothed out, then return to wherever she left off in making a risotto, running a bath, spending time with friends, or her lover.
Chris' biggest character flaw so far seems to be a type of passive guilt. She engages in activities that she knows is wrong, realizes that it's hurtful, but she does not do a single thing (yet) to stop herself. Her direct emotional investment in her client's issues is a nice twist from the usual apathetic psychiatrist playing Sudoku on their notes. Even though I'm not that big of a fan of Anshaw's writing in this chapter (it seems a bit too stilted and formal at points), I like how she's made her character self-deprecating without becoming annoying.
Chris continues to feel sorry for herself and Rosario gets out some weird voodoo shit or something. It's not particularly clear. Also, apparently Chris hasn't genuinely cried in years and she's jealous of Rosario for being able to wear her emotions on her sleeve.
Anyway, Chris suggests that Rosario should take steps to start slowly distancing herself from Tony, that she is blinded from his faults because the sex is so good.
Seven Moves wrote:
"You're right, of course. I should have the courage to kill him."
Chris' back twinges with a small spasm.
"Powder, I think." Rosario is rolling now, her voice gone to gravel. "You know. Tap a little into the drink." She sighs richly.
Anshaw has finally gone too far. Rosario was already a caricature whose sole purpose seems to be contrasting Chris, and now the bitch is actually plotting murder. Beautiful. Just in time, though, she is escorted out of the book with the quick swish of a paragraph change.
And Chris sees another patient, a gay man with OCD named Jerome Pratt. And that's when the good old sex theme pops up again:
Seven Moves wrote:
Today he tells her about having sex with the new boyfriend, Keith, in one of the carrels along a forgotten hallway of the library at Northwestern, where Jerome works. He is quite graphic. There are reciprocal blowjobs involved and near discovery by the custodian. The story (she can't tell if really happened or is just a fantasy) and the deadpan way Jerome relates it becomes arousing. She would like to ask for more details about the blowjobs, instead must stick to business. She shifts in her chair and clears her throat. "So. Did you experience any urgency to wash your hands afterward?"
I like how Anshaw is multitasking here: putting a tension-breaking joke in front of another very telling sign about how sex-obsessed Chris seems to be (or is it simply because her own clients are obsessed with sex?). Also, Chris has been rather morbid up until this point, and it's a bit of a relief to see she has a snarky side too. Maybe this book won't be such a depression-fest after all.
So, after a page or two of shaking up the 8-ball on her desk and fantasizing about getting a naked massage from Sigourney Weaver in her Alien getup (but really, who doesn't?) we're finally introduced to Chris' girlfriend, Taylor Hayes.
Taylor is portrayed as a sort of dominating figure in their relationship, a seductive and powerful force of nature to whom Chris falls like a pack of cards. The image of her in my head is a bit like Chloe Frazer from Uncharted 2, except lesbian.
Because everything's hotter with Claudia Black. (Incidentally, the first suggested Google search to pop up for Chloe was "chloe frazer rule 34". Oh, Internet - may you never change.
The dirtier side of Chris and Taylor's early love life comes to light. Chris is set up on a blind date by her married friends, after a tumultuous relationship with a woman named Lois who is nicknamed The Human Pet (no, seriously!). Chris ignores the date and finds Taylor being all seductive. Problem is, Taylor was seeing another woman, Diane, at the time. I find it funny how Chris immediately portrays Diane as some sort of card-carrying villain for the simple crime of getting into Taylor's pants first.
Seven Moves wrote:
She was in the close company of her lover, whose radar threw out circles of awareness, blipping up any unidentified craft hovering into their airspace.
I am now imagining Diane as a sort of large, Zeppelin-like woman with a radar dish on her back. You're welcome.
The rest of the Taylor backstory feels kind of weird too. There's a rather disturbing scene where Taylor and Chris sit out on the back patio of a restaurant, accidentally brushing against each other while Diane has a clear view of them from inside.
The rest of the flashback is more straightforward: Chris essentially plays the waiting game while Taylor looks for an opportune moment to break up with Diane, which is delayed due to some real estate they had planned to build together. Long story short, Taylor ditches Blimp Lady for our bespectacled, tall, homely heroine.
With the backstory finished, Chris meets Taylor at a trendy faux-Italian restaurant. Taylor is a freelance photographer (explaining the filmstrips in the chapter anyway) who just came back from Morocco taking pictures for a guide book on safe Middle Eastern travel for single women. They have a brief discussion about Chris' fear of flying, or specifically airplanes (yeah, it just sorta comes out of nowhere. I don't like it either), but even Chris admits that she's only interested in wanting to see Taylor again. Worried that Taylor might be cheating on her in Morocco, Chris tries to push the discussion to a more intimate level, so desperate is she for some action after her lover spent all this time away.
After a brief love scene - that, sadly, gets passed over >:( - Anshaw ends the chapter with the couple in each others' arms and a truly bizarre ending sentence:
Seven Moves wrote:
She is a traveler even when she is home, in motion even when she is at rest, and Chris feels herself reaching out, Taylor always slipping through her fingers, like spilled mercury.
Clearly this book is not safe for science majors.
So, folks, what do you think? If any of you have read the book, do you have differing opinions on this first chapter? (The entirety of Chapter 1 is on Google Books if you so wish) Let's get some discussion going!
My current project: Something mysterious (oooooh!)
My username is all lower-case letters. Please get it right :(
Hey, with that topic name change, I actually was bothered to read it. And hey, I like your style of writing, so I might just check in for more, because it seems interesting enough.
Also, Snake dies or something.
In Chapter 2 of Seven Moves, Chris and Taylor finally move in together, there's some relationship drama and we're introduced to the coolest character in the book so far. Are you ready? Then let's read Seven Moves.
CHAPTER 2
As you may have guessed from the tone of my previous review, I am not a particular fan of Ms. Anshaw's writing. At least, I wasn't in the first chapter. I think part of this can be blamed on a good chunk of the chapter being set in Chris' office, and a quick look at the acknowledgments confirmed my suspicions that Anshaw has no background in psychiatry (or any type of therapy) whatsoever, and it really showed in the first five or so pages of the book. I'm happy to say that this chapter is certainly a step in the right direction, but not quite there yet.
The chapter opens with Chris complaining about her back again. I smell foreshadowing.
Most of Chapter 2 is set in a neighbourhood populated by yuppie gay couples in Chicago (I kept imagining the neighbourhood around Church and Wellesley in downtown Toronto - for the non-Canadians in the house, it's where Queer As Folk was shot), and it feels like Anshaw is settling into familiar territory. Not that that's a bad thing, as her writing suddenly becomes far more vivid as a result:
Seven Moves wrote:
Finally, she passes the giant, comic head of Abe fronting the Lincoln Restaurant, and turns onto her street. She pulls up in front of her house an taps the last of a bag of M&M's into her palm as she listens to Norman Greenbaum pumping out "Spirit in the Sky" on the oldies station. It's an unleavable song and so she sits a moment longer, rocking and rolling a little in her Corolla, contemplating her real estate, this small, shambly frame house with salt-and-pepper asphalt siding and buckling wooden steps.
I can almost close my eyes and imagine myself in the passenger seat. where is my own personal Chris? =(Seven Moves wrote:
The neighbourhood is changing, upscaling but in an ungainly way. That is, while several houses on their block have been renovated by new owners – Board of Traders, young dentists and the like – who quickly ensconse themselves behind tasteful, Italianate dark green wrought-iron fences, the tenured residents of the block are people who work in factories and grocery stores and on job sites. So any one of the yuppified houses, for all its landscaping and ADT alarming, might well sit squarely across the street from a two-flat with a rooster in a cage in the front yard.
THIS IS GOOD WRITING GUYS. Where the hell was this sort of description when Chris was in her boring old office, huh?!
These opening few pages show the benefits of writing what you know. You can tell that Anshaw either lives or is intimately familiar with this area of Chicago. And it works beautifully as a result.
Skipping ahead a bit, it turns out that Chris and Taylor are trying to renovate their house. Chris, it seems, had finally bought her first house around the same time that Taylor ditched Blimp Lady. It's in pretty shitty shape.
Seven Moves wrote:
Having bought the house, [Chris and Taylor] have both become ambivalent about it, although they would never admit their hesitations to each other. Instead, they offset their praise with small complaints about drafts or the cramped clawfoot tub in the upstairs bathroom. In this way , the house has become a rich metaphor for the unspoken, inarticulate nettles they have with each other, about what is happening, or not happening, between them.
While it's nice to see Chris finally admit that her relationship with Taylor is on the shaky side, she still does absolutely nothing to resolve this issue, much like her unhealthy obsession with her clients' problems in the previous chapter.
It brings up an interesting point about Chris' personality which I haven't discussed yet: her escapist tendencies. She doesn't quite hate who she is, per se, but she has an inherent desire to dive headlong into a sort of fiction, whether it be totally imaginary or simply pretending she is one of her clients or whatnot. Even in her relationship with Tyler, she often shields the truth from herself by reimagining Taylor as the butch, flirty, smoking-hot powerhouse, while Chris is the homely but cute girl-next-door who got lucky and snagged a wonderful prize for a girlfriend.
It's especially apparent when Chris describes Taylor as a girlfriend. Even one paragraph after describing a difficult night where Taylor has been tossing and turning with impatience, Chris still paints Taylor with a sort of reverence:
Seven Moves wrote:
Taylor is, aside from her penchant for flirtation, a dream lover – attentive and considerate, surprising. She brings fresh mozzarella home from the Italian grocery, massages Chris' hands with almond oil. Everything truly troublesome about her is buried in cable, subterranean trunk line. The closest Chris can get to Taylor's true identity is feeling the vibration of this secret information as it rushes deep beneath the ground the two of them stand on, facing each other with pleasant expressions, good will, and smooth, practiced approximations of intimacy. It's a little like being married to a spy.
Despite Taylor clearly being the butch in this relationship, with Chris and the effête, I find it kind of amusing how it's Chris that's pushing for sex, and yet, true to character, a bit scared to make an advance. This actually does get elaborated on later, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Chris is about to host a dinner party when she finds the back door unlocked. Suspicious, she heads out into the back garden to find not only Taylor gardening, but also....
Seven Moves wrote:
Only then does she notice that Taylor is not alone in the yard, that Chris' father is sitting at the wobbly redwood table (another legacy from the Herbsts), a glass of iced tea sweating in front of him as he deals hands for a poker game with invisible opponents. His showing up unnanounced like this means he needs money.
This is Ted Snow, amateur magician, part-time professional gambler, and full-time lecherous old man. And he is awesome.
The next couple of pages describe Tom's unique backstory and he quickly became my favourite character in the book. Apparently, Tom decided that, in order to live the high life, he'd make a killing at casinos. He wasn't always succesful, and had spent some time in jail for cheating in the past. His plan to win money was actually quite clever; once Chris (who is apparently a gifted gambler taught by her father) was of age, he would use her during their spring and summer breaks as a distraction, with a combination of sexiness and being a fucking child prodigy at cards, while he used his skill in magic to rig his own decks in his favour. Once Chris moved to a place of her own, however, Tom's luck flatlined, although he still haunted casinos and occasionally won some money.
Chris' early relationship with her father serves to highlight another angle of her escapism which hadn't been addressed before. Chris notes how she becomes self-confident when assuming her casino persona, a “murderess with a good lawyer” as she puts it, a spoiled child begging for daddy to let her play a little cards. Chris recalls this with an air of nostalgia which, in my interpretation, helps to explain why she becomes obssessed with her clients' problems. She likes becoming other people. Maybe she should have been an actor?
Chris promises her father some money and shoos him away before their guests arrive, telling him that they're “not your kind of girls.” Chris and Taylor then argue a bit about what they could have done with the $1,100 Chris had given to her father. Chris hates to see Taylor upset, so she finally sheds her sexual shyness.
Seven Moves wrote:
Chris tries another test of Taylor's mood. She watches as Taylor pulls a bunch of carrots out of the vegetable bin in the refrigerator and takes them over to the sink, starts running water, finds the peeler in the drawer. Then Chris comes up behind her, reaches inside [Taylor's] shirt, traces fingers around her waist, then up to her nipples. She feels Taylor tense beneath her touch.
O_O
*AHEM*
Anyway, not only is this really damn hot, it's also an important step in Chris' character development. Even though Taylor shakes off Chris' advances (mainly because their guests are about to arrive any minute), the fact that Chris is trying to take the initiative at all in their relationship is a telling sign of Chris' barely-burgeoning independence. Their relationship is not exactly sex-free, but Taylor has always been the one to start. Chris has always thought constantly about shagging Taylor wherever and whenever she can, but again, she's never done anything about it. Until now, it seems. Chris has finally fixed a problematic element of her life! OMG CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!!1!
The narrative jumps forward to the dinner party. Their guest is Taylor's friend Leigh and her girlfriend. Another lesbian, Leigh has the odd habit of showing up to dinner with her girlfriend-of-the-week to get Taylor's approval. Leigh doesn't get much character depth in this chapter, but I like how her antics serve as a way for Chris and Taylor to finally bond over something (in this case, the eccentricities of each of Leigh's girlfriends) without it feeling forced or artificial.
Leigh's girlfriend is Tiff, a modern-art experimental mime (no, really!) And her one scene is hilarious.
Seven Moves wrote:
Tiff stands in the middle of the living room, her hands flattened against an imaginary pane of glass between herself and the audience, which is comprised of Chris and Taylor and a rapt Leigh. Tiff's face is a child's twist of consternation. The only sound in the room is the sticky creaking of her leather jeans.
"She's trying to break the fourth wall," Leigh finally explains, as though to a meeting of the Dunderhead Society. "Her pieces are self-conscious; they're about the failure of performance to obtain meaning." This line sounds suspiciously to Chris like a sentence cribbed from an art magazine Leigh picked up off the coffee table.
I love this probably inaccurate but still really funny description of Modern Art. Chris and Taylor finally stop finding excuses to complain about things and bond over making fun of Tiff's, er, performance piece. All seems sunshine and rainbows.
For a few pages.
After Leigh gets some news on her phone about a train wreck out in Indiana,
Seven Moves wrote:
In search of a mislaid corkscrew, Chris comes upon a smaller, domestic misadventure. Taylor is in the living room, by the bookshelves, pushing aside with her hand the great wave of pale blond hair that falls over Tiff's left eye. For her part in the vignette, Tiff is playfully biting the base of Taylor's thumb.
How did Chris not see this coming? How did I not see this coming? A flirty catch is still flirty once you've caught it, after all. Shit has gotten real, people.
But Chris doesn't seem to think so. She gives Taylor nothing but a scolding, with the implication that she has engaged in this type of behaviour before. Chris even excuses Taylor's behaviour as mere instinct. So much for that character development then.
That night they sleep as far away from each other as possible and Taylor gets up in the middle of the night, disappearing downstairs. This a pretty strong comparison to the archetypal "sex-deprived husband goes downstairs to have a wank" scenario. And then the chapter ends.
I'm much more excited to read this book, now that there's actual DRAMA and all that stuff. Oh, and here's a new running gag for these reviews:
The Obligatory Carol Anshaw Unintentionally Hilarious Sentence!Seven Moves wrote:
The first time Chris ran the dryer it made a huge, chainsaw-massacre noise that rattled the walls and drove the dog up to the attic.
My current project: Something mysterious (oooooh!)
My username is all lower-case letters. Please get it right :(
I was also kind of hoping for some discussion and feedback on the thread between each chapter. You know, considering this is the first time I've done something like this before.
My current project: Something mysterious (oooooh!)
My username is all lower-case letters. Please get it right :(
I'll just pop in to say that despite the wall of text, it's not at all a bother to read. I like your style of writing, so I'm gonna read the next one too.
THAT NEVER HAPPENED.
In all seriousness though, the Paper Mario thing was a Let's Play, while my current project is more akin to a review blog. So, not quite the same thing!
My current project: Something mysterious (oooooh!)
My username is all lower-case letters. Please get it right :(
In Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 of Seven Moves (Chapter 4 is only six pages, so I decided to review it alongside this one), the monomyth is defied (with disastrous results) as Chris spends the better part of thirty pages doing absolutely nothing useful, and Carol Anshaw proves she cannot write lengthy dialog. Are you ready? Then let's read Seven Moves.
CHAPTERS 3 AND 4
My review is going to be shorter than the last two, if only because there is so little that actually happens, and just thinking about these two chapters makes me slighlty nauseous. But I digress.
Until I read Chapter 3, I had taken a certain element of fiction for granted: the act of forcing the protagonist into the action after they have refused the call for adventure. It's the moment where Luke Skywalker refuses to further his training with Obi-Wan Kenobi, only to find his family home in ruins. It's the point of no return. Forcing a situation upon the protagonist, and making them pick up the pieces of their traumatized psyche as they have no choice but to charge ahead, unprepared and uncertain of themselves, makes for a much more interesting read than allowing the protagonist to take their time, pack their things and head out with all the tools they need before ever stepping out their front door.
Perhaps a talented writer could potentially make this interesting, maybe creating an internal battle where the protagonist realizes that every second they spend preparing is allowing their enemy one more second to prepare a counterattack. Carol Anshaw, as I have already established, is not a particularly talented writer. She's far from horrible, but she is most definitely not skilled enough to subvert such an important part of the Hero's Journey effectively.
Unfortunately, that's exactly what she does with Chris Snow.
It has become painfully obvious to both the genre-savvy reader and Chris herself that Taylor is no longer simply hiding. Something has happened to her. So what does Chris do?
She goes to work.
Yeah.
In what is most certainly the largest piece of filler I have encountered in a book in a VERY long time, Chris spends roughly the equivalent length of the entire rest of the book so far ignoring the disappearance of her partner and simply going about her normal day. If Chris were a real person, this kind of response to such a sudden traumatic event would be idiotic, but at least understandable. I can definitely relate to her situation at least as far as imploding apathy is concerned. On the few occasions I've witnessed or been somehow involved in something like a car accident, my first instinct has been to hide in a corner, trying to escape from the reality in front of me. The problem I have here is not the realism, but the readability of the story. An apathetic response to trauma just isn't that interesting to read, and unfortunately, the end result shows off a lot of Anshaw's flaws.
The majority of Chapter 3 can be summarized by the following:
Link to video
I could have just written the rest of the review in memes, but I didn't want to be too lazy, because it's been quite a while since my last review. So let's get back on track.
Perhaps it would be quite unfair to suggest that Chris completely forgets about Taylor. She certainly thinks about her through the narration a lot, reminiscing on certain memorable parts of their relationship. But because Chris does next to nothing to actually help find Taylor (noticing a pattern?), her flashbacking comes across as escapist. This is one instance where a realistic thought pattern actually hurts the flow of storytelling.
Chris avoids the current crisis in a number of ways: calling her mother, focusing on her patients, trying to get her assistant Daniel to go see Tommy. In between these distracting social rituals, her thoughts turn to Taylor. She makes half-hearted attempts to try and find her (such as going to a lesbian strip club where she knows Taylor has hung out in the past) but quickly gives up and gets drunk.
See, this is why I hate this chapter so much; she constantly thinks about Taylor, but never does anything to, I dunno, call the police?! Again, I know it's already established that inaction is a character flaw of Chris', but she had shown signs of breaking out of it in Chapter 2, and I'm furious that a character trait is slowing the book down.
That's not to say that all is bad though. There's one nice section about eighteen pages in where Chris recalls one of her first lovemaking sessions with Taylor. The text even changes format; it's indented and given its own font. In a sea of suck, the one flashback comes across as sweet, even romantic.
But that still doesn't change things. By the time Chapter 4 ends, we are at page 61. This is only a 220-page book. Over 25% of the book has been wasted on simply setting up the initial conflict and our heroine crying in a corner of her mind.
That being said, come Chapter 4, she's apparently gotten over most of her moping:
Seven Moves wrote:
She calls 911. They tell her to hang up and wait, they'll have someone from Missing Persons call her back. This happens within minutes. The woman on the other end has a form in front of her. ... They'll need a description, a name.
She hesitates a moment, trying to hold things for just a fraction of time, back where they were, in the clouded realm of before. Then she crosses the threshold. "Taylor Heyes," she says, trying to think where to begin, to come up with a first point in a galaxy of points. Any one of them will be inadequate, so she picks one at random. "She's tall."
About. Fucking. Time.
My current project: Something mysterious (oooooh!)
My username is all lower-case letters. Please get it right :(
That not-dealing with the problem happens in way too many stories (not just books, TV as well) and it almost always ruins it. Somehow, in the land of fiction, any problem causes loss of common sense.
Anyway, nice writing. I simply love paragraphs of well-founded complaining.
To my devoted readers, (yes, both of you!)
I wish to ask you your opinion on the following matters which have been bugging me for quite a while:
1. Should there be one devoted "theenglishman reads" thread, or separate threads for each book? (I'm still hesitant about setting up a blog for this purpose because I'm afraid this project will lose what little exposure I already have).
2. My initial goal when creating this thread was to give me a valid excuse to start reading again. This meant that the books I reviewed would be ones sitting otherwise neglected on my shelf. That being said, I am open to taking requests, provided I can access the books you're talking about. So,
a) what books would you recommend?
and
b) should I reply to requests by posting in the thread, or through private message?
The books I have on deck for reviewing (once I finish Seven Moves) are Kockroach by Tyler Knox, The Unexpected and Fictional Career Change of Jim Kearns by David Munroe, The Going Rate by John Brady and Desertion by Abdulrazak Gurnah (in addition to some more books that are back home in Toronto. there's also House of Leaves hidden somewhere on my shelf, but there's no way in hell I'd be comfortable with reviewing something that....unusual).
I still plan on reviewing Kockroach right after I finish Seven Moves, but my third book will likely be a request, provided I can get my hands on it of course.
3. Related to question 2, should I modify the OP to include a "List Of Books Already Requested for theenglishman's Reviews," so people don't try to recommend the same book twice? (with addenda noting which books are rejected/already read/already reviewed)
I am in the process of writing my Chapter 5 review of Seven Moves (I'll only say that it is far more interesting than the last two chapters) and will be posting it sometime this weekend.
My current project: Something mysterious (oooooh!)
My username is all lower-case letters. Please get it right :(
Yo.
1.I feel it should be kept in one thread, if only because the moderators wouldn't like it cluttering the rest of the forum.
2.I read even less than you do, so I don't know any mentionable books, so I can't help you there, I'm afraid.
3.Sure go ahead, what harm can it do?
Pretty much the same as scrimpeh said, but as far as making an actual blog for it: It might be interesting to make a page for it where your reviews are neatly categorized. Then again, you can include links to posts in the OP to this effect.
I picked Seven Moves up today at Half Price Books because I was bored. It was only five dollars and I liked the cover: an empty purple suitcase with a solid brown background. The blurbs on the back cover pegged it as some sort of thriller, "a thrilling psychological journey that takes you through a dizzying sweep of emotions" and all that. Fine, I can dig that. A Boston Globe blurb even compared the author Carol Anshaw to John Updike, of all people. So I figured, why not? Let's see where this rabbit runs.
In the first chapter of Seven Moves, not much really happens, but we are introduced to our protagonist, therapist Christine Snow, as she spends her day listening to her overly dramatic patients at work. Also lesbians. So what are we waiting for? Let's get started.
CHAPTER 1
The book opens with an epigraph from the song Aimless Love by John Prine:
I like how Anshaw is multitasking here: putting a tension-breaking joke in front of another very telling sign about how sex-obsessed Chris seems to be (or is it simply because her own clients are obsessed with sex?). Also, Chris has been rather morbid up until this point, and it's a bit of a relief to see she has a snarky side too. Maybe this book won't be such a depression-fest after all.
So, after a page or two of shaking up the 8-ball on her desk and fantasizing about getting a naked massage from Sigourney Weaver in her Alien getup (but really, who doesn't?) we're finally introduced to Chris' girlfriend, Taylor Hayes.
Taylor is portrayed as a sort of dominating figure in their relationship, a seductive and powerful force of nature to whom Chris falls like a pack of cards. The image of her in my head is a bit like Chloe Frazer from Uncharted 2, except lesbian.
Because everything's hotter with Claudia Black. (Incidentally, the first suggested Google search to pop up for Chloe was "chloe frazer rule 34". Oh, Internet - may you never change.
The dirtier side of Chris and Taylor's early love life comes to light. Chris is set up on a blind date by her married friends, after a tumultuous relationship with a woman named Lois who is nicknamed The Human Pet (no, seriously!). Chris ignores the date and finds Taylor being all seductive. Problem is, Taylor was seeing another woman, Diane, at the time. I find it funny how Chris immediately portrays Diane as some sort of card-carrying villain for the simple crime of getting into Taylor's pants first.
was that a story review!? I'll read full, but tomorrow xD
EDIT FROM IRC:theenglishman always say right! xD
How did Chris not see this coming? How did I not see this coming? A flirty catch is still flirty once you've caught it, after all. Shit has gotten real, people.
But Chris doesn't seem to think so. She gives Taylor nothing but a scolding, with the implication that she has engaged in this type of behaviour before. Chris even excuses Taylor's behaviour as mere instinct. So much for that character development then.
That night they sleep as far away from each other as possible and Taylor gets up in the middle of the night, disappearing downstairs. This a pretty strong comparison to the archetypal "sex-deprived husband goes downstairs to have a wank" scenario. And then the chapter ends.
I'm much more excited to read this book, now that there's actual DRAMA and all that stuff. Oh, and here's a new running gag for these reviews:
The Obligatory Carol Anshaw Unintentionally Hilarious Sentence!
In all seriousness though, the Paper Mario thing was a Let's Play, while my current project is more akin to a review blog. So, not quite the same thing!
Link to video
I could have just written the rest of the review in memes, but I didn't want to be too lazy, because it's been quite a while since my last review. So let's get back on track.
Perhaps it would be quite unfair to suggest that Chris completely forgets about Taylor. She certainly thinks about her through the narration a lot, reminiscing on certain memorable parts of their relationship. But because Chris does next to nothing to actually help find Taylor (noticing a pattern?), her flashbacking comes across as escapist. This is one instance where a realistic thought pattern actually hurts the flow of storytelling.
Chris avoids the current crisis in a number of ways: calling her mother, focusing on her patients, trying to get her assistant Daniel to go see Tommy. In between these distracting social rituals, her thoughts turn to Taylor. She makes half-hearted attempts to try and find her (such as going to a lesbian strip club where she knows Taylor has hung out in the past) but quickly gives up and gets drunk.
See, this is why I hate this chapter so much; she constantly thinks about Taylor, but never does anything to, I dunno, call the police?! Again, I know it's already established that inaction is a character flaw of Chris', but she had shown signs of breaking out of it in Chapter 2, and I'm furious that a character trait is slowing the book down.
That's not to say that all is bad though. There's one nice section about eighteen pages in where Chris recalls one of her first lovemaking sessions with Taylor. The text even changes format; it's indented and given its own font. In a sea of suck, the one flashback comes across as sweet, even romantic.
But that still doesn't change things. By the time Chapter 4 ends, we are at page 61. This is only a 220-page book. Over 25% of the book has been wasted on simply setting up the initial conflict and our heroine crying in a corner of her mind.
That being said, come Chapter 4, she's apparently gotten over most of her moping:
