I seem to have been avoiding listening to Berg's books, but for some reason this one looked appealing, maybe it was the bluejay on the cover. Helen Ames is a writer, who recently lost her husband and seems to have lost her ability to write. She obsesses over her 26 year old daughter Tessa and I am sorry, but this character just drove me nuts. She seemed to be so helpless in practical things, so whiny, so overbearing as a mother, so nosy. Any one of those traits would have been OK, but the combination just made her very unappealing to me. Often I would just cringe or be saying to myself: "Oh, just shut up" or "get over yourself," though I fully realize I have my own insane conversations going on in my head. I understood that Berg was actually presenting this character working her way out of grief, but I still had very little patience for her.
The only part I really liked was when she was teaching a writing workshop to a very diverse group of people, and Berg gave wonderful fictional examples of their writing. She can write, so maybe I should try one more book before I put her on my list of authors to avoid.
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