While others joined the hordes celebrating Black Friday, I hunkered down at home celebrating Blah Friday--a day free of obligations, responsibilities, and urgent tasks, a perfect day for making potato soup, drinking hot tea, and reading a good book.
Except I'm not entirely convinced that it is a good book. Ian McEwen's Sweet Tooth is both sweet and sour, featuring a lightweight but nevertheless lovable female protagonist trying to maneuver the labyrinth of early adulthood without being out-maneuvered by the surrounding panoply of manipulative men--including the author.
The metafictional twist at the end should be unsurprising to anyone familiar with Atonement, but Sweet Tooth explores a fluffier moral landscape than Atonement, which makes the twist both unexpected and completely right--unless it's completely wrong. I can't decide. After spending much of the novel wanting to grab Our Heroine by the shoulders and shake some sense into her, I had to turn that same treatment on myself. You try it. Not comfortable.
But it was a great way to spend a long, luscious, boring day. Today I'll venture forth to celebrate small-town shopping day in the most appropriate way, well rested and refreshed thanks to a totally blah Friday.
1 comment:
I heard a scathing review of Sweet Tooth on NPR. I was wondering what you would think of it.
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