Oh, I was so close to loving this book. I really liked it. A lot. I liked Margaret Rose Kane. I liked her uncles. I liked the towers, particularly because I didn't like them very much at first (too abstract, too eccentric, both Erica-criticisms). I even liked the plan to save them and I was thrilled when Peter Vanderwaal decided they were "outsider art." I totally bought that they could be saved that way, and I also bought the idea of a big company buying them. I did not feel betrayed by this book, as I often do when books try to be too clever. And E.L. Konigsburg has more narrative talent in her little finger than most of the writers we've read so far, so the fact that the prose is smooth and pretty without being (mostly) unobtrusive isn't surprising.
So I really only have three complaints:
1) I feel like all of the cool, weird adults in her books are the same person (possibly her). And I don't really buy the way they talk, so I could perhaps believe in one of them, but not several in the same title. Peter and Loretta sounded way too similar to me -- probably why they got married, I suppose.
2) Speaking of marriage -- were there any clues that M.K.R.'s parents were ending theirs? I hate that kind of emotional surprise, but maybe I missed the foreshadowing (read this book in one sitting).
3) Way. Too. Much. Information at the end. This really isn't a long enough book to justify going into excruciating detail in an epilogue about every character and what they ended up doing, and I definitely don't want to hear my narrator become an adult when she was already interesting enough as a kid. Should have quit while she was ahead.
But! We are doing better at choosing books! I hope this trend continues. ;-)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
There were an unusual number of cool adults in this book. As for the marriage foreshadowing...I seem to remember some phrase early in the book mentioning something about how her parents were still together "for now" or something. But there wasn't much of a parent-Margaret relationship at all...then again, I might be forgetting something.
I wonder what kids who are MRK's age think about the epilogue at the end...usually books just end "happily ever after" without touching on the horrors of entering into adulthood (barring "coming of age" Judy Blume books). Too bad we're all old people.
I wonder if Konigsburg wanted to complete the highway ramp to Silent to the Bone with all of the growing-up detail in Margaret's story. Kind of the same trap George Lucas falls into with having to connect strings to a pre-existing future.
Also, y'all reminded me of Jacob Have I Loved, in which the conflict does not resolve until the characters are grown up. So annoying. I remember hating that when I first read it as a teen. It seemed patronizing, as if I had been told, "Don't worry, Jo, you'll grow out of all of your petty kid problems." I did NOT feel this way in The Outcasts, so rack up another fifty points for Konigsburg.
I hate Jacob Have I Loved, which I thought for years was Jacob I Have Loved, which only gives me more reason to dislike it.
Post a Comment