My 75 Books post for the past two weeks will still have to wait, but in the meantime, one of the books, Elliot Perlman’s Seven Types of Ambiguity, has been taken up by the remarkable Jenny D. Her verdict: She completely loved it. Again, we have a possible case here of Perlman being misunderstood. But there are easy reasons to love and there are easy reasons to hate the book. I’ll say that I thought Simon, much like all the other cases, an inveterate whiner, and yet an interesting one. I think the biggest point of contention is this: If Simon is an intellectual, why does he not rationalize his way out of loving/stalking Anna, much less kidnapping her son? If you can accept this wild melodramatic premise, then I think you will accept the book. My theory for those who love it and those who hate it: If during some portion of your life you have thought or have been momentarily misguided by such visceral flights, you will “get” it. Perhaps in Australia, where the book was a bestseller, this is more of an unreserved character trait than in lofty New York circles. Then again, reader temperament shouldn’t be a criteria for whether a book is “good” or not.
Seven Explanations Before the Roundup
– February 13, 2006Posted in: Perlman, Elliot
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
Well, the one problem with the internet is that it would be better to talk about this over a beer: but I would somewhat revise your central point here, which is to say that I have no problem believing that someone very intelligent and intellectual might be in the grip of an insane obsession that he was incompletely incapable of rationalizing. What I don’t see is why Anna wants him back; it is well described, why she broke up with him in the first place, and I don’t see either the “saving-the-son-from-drowing” thing or the “my-current-husband-is-a-yahoo” thing as sufficient to explain that about-face. (Also I found Joe and Dennis/Mitch the two most appealing narrators. I think Joe would be a better husband than Simon.)
Really? I thought Joe was an interesting though extremely awful and troubled man (the incident with the reporter and his deceit springs immediately to mind), in large part because the guy didn’t have the effrontery to confess what he wanted in life or come to terms with his background. And I agree with you about Dennis. I was most troubled by the Angelique chapter, in which she spends far too much time fawning over how brilliant Simon is. Perlman doesn’t write women especially well.
As for Simon, I think his appeal is one of the more ambiguous aspects of the book. One of the novel’s mysteries is why these women flock to such a clearly disturbed and miserable person. Then again, some women are drawn naturally to this. The sense I got with Angelique and Anna is that they both come from an abusive past. So they might see Simon as someone to be healed. I was also troubled by Anna’s return to Simon, which seemed to suggest that she was returning to some harmful cycle. But then humans have a tendency to do that.
I have no problems, per se, with an intelligent person becoming obsessed. I think I don’t completely buy the motivations behind the obsession. When you factor in the ten year period, and when we see (at least from Simon’s perspective) that he really hasn’t done much else but beat himself up, it remains suspect. Even manic depressives, who have wild ups and downs, have their happy moments. With Simon, we really didn’t get one.
Of course, all criticisms aside, for the most part, I still enjoyed the book.
Oh, yes, I loved it (more I think than you did), I like an enjoyable novel to disagree with now & again! I’d be curious to know how it did sales-wise–I thought it was great, but I think it may be a bit too intellectual for the page-turner crowd and page-turny for the intellectual (plus this doctrinaire liberal hostility towards deconstruction and markets is not necessarily the right note to hit for that crowd). Anyway, I await your further thoughts with interest if you get around to that 75 books post…
I finished the book last night, which is a surprise to me since I’ve vowed to not finish books I don’t love (life being too short and all that). So, no, I didn’t love it but I didn’t quite loathe it either. The book felt loosely done to me. The voices of the characters didn’t ring true to me–especially Angelique–and I did not like the endless dialogue.
Angelique was certainly the biggest problem in my opinion, particularly as you say the voice question.
I rarely read contemporary novels twice. Yet have just finished my second perusal and found myself speed-reading AGAIN, despite knowing where the plot was going and consciously making an effort to slow down and absorb the wisdom of the characters/author. I think I’ll let it settle a while before my next reading… Fabulous book.