First, a big thanks to Julie Joyce for hosting us in her absolutely lovely home, well sheltered from the Cary St. traffic and so welcoming. Thank you so much for having us and for the absolutely yummy shrimp cups - would you share the recipe?
Of course there was a lot of other fantastic food, so much that it took us a bit to get to the book. When we did however, our opinion was very consistent. The premise had a lot of promise and interesting characters but the plot failed to take advantage of its opportunities and devolved into a repetitive pattern that brought no higher insight or purpose to the story. There was so much imagination and invention, but in the end, there was too much to make a cohesive and compelling story.
In fact, Val went so far as to say she had never hated a book more that she finished reading and that seemed to summarize the overall response. There was enough in the premise to keep people reading, but not enough to convince them it was worth the time.
There were a number of gaps that made it difficult to find a framework to explain the story. For example, why could Adam conform to look like Evelyn, then Adam and then freeze into Adam for all time? What brought him/her there to start with and why was that no part of the story? What was the meaning behind choosing Adam and Evelyn as the names, really is this biblical?
The worst fault to me was that the story went nowhere. Much like The Time Traveler's Wife, it was a repetition of the same events over and over, with no progression in the development of the plot and character, just another episode. This doesn't draw a story to a clear conclusion, it only keeps you reading in hope of one.
And, in this case, the end was telegraphed fairly clearly, so it was in fact wholly predictable. Too bad. Maybe next time this author will do a better job of editing her content, much like Virginia Pye explained she had done with her River of Dust, and come up with a winner. She clearly has the imagination, now she just needs the implementation.
Our next book is The Wife by Meg Worlitzer and we will be at Carol's. Thank you so much for agreeing to host! The date is October 14 (Columbus Day) so mark your calendars.
The book after that is Haints by Clint McCown, who is Dawn's husband. Clint has agreed to meet with us, should be a ton of fun! The date is November 18 and we will be at Ashley's. Thank you!
Our December meeting will be a redo of our very fun Holiday Party Book Exchange. I will host, and each of us will bring a book we want to share with someone else, wrapped with a note as to why you chose that book, but without your name. We will then have a Yankee swap with the books and the book that gets swapped the most will be our February selection. At some point we will let people know who brought what book.
Ok, feel free to weigh in with your thoughts, see you all at Carol's on Oct. 14!
