Finally, I have read every author from The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 list, and while a lot of the writers on that list are amazing and have super-bright futures ahead of them (Karen Russell, Philipp Meyer, Wells Tower, Joshua Ferris and ZZ Packer to be exact), a lot of the choices on the list seemed to just fill a void and based solely on the quality of how derivative their work is, instead of originality (Jonathan Safran Foer, David Bezmozgis, and Dinaw Mengetu spring to mind), and this last author, Nell Freudenberger, and her novel, The Dissident fall into the latter category. It is not that she is someone who is just copying writers from earlier generations; it is just that the book she wrote offers nothing special. Nothing about it jumps out at you the way Everything Ravaged, Everything burned by Wells Tower and Swamplandia! By Karen Russell not only commanded your attention with great plots and fictional people you wouldn’t find anywhere else, they also command respect and take there place among the best of writers today. This book didn’t really do that. It is hindered by its obsessions with cultural differences (always rearing its ugly head) and self-importance. It is also too long, with its 400 pages needing to be cut down to 200. The novel about a Chinese artist who lives with a well-to-do family in LA is very standard, but for all my bad mouthing I didn’t hate it at all. I give it a solid B for a few moments of entertainment (like any scene with the bush baby), and I think in the end all of its focus on weird artists doing weird things for the sake of validating themselves, the book (and I hope Freudenberger as well) is very critical of that kind of shallow behavior, and for that, I give it brownie points. Not the best, but again, I am glad to have read the book.
Rating: 4/5
No comments:
Post a Comment