Category: 100 Best Novels

I was looking forward to this book tremendously as soon as I looked it up. It’s got an unusual (possibly unique) story structure, it’s loosely centered around the world of punk rock and the music industry, and it’s relatively (by comparison to some of the books on my reading list) new. I suspect it was partly my anticipation for this book that made The Death of the Heart such a disappointment.

Spoiler alert: I absolutely loved this book.

There are two things I mostly want to mention about it – the story structure, and the 12th (chapter or story, depending on who you ask) “Great Rock and Roll Pauses by Alison Blake”. I suspect both of these things are what other reviews also tend to focus on, but I’ve made an effort not to read any one else’s reviews before writing my own, so who knows.

The structure of this story is, as I mentioned, is unusual. To the point that some people apparently don’t consider it to be a novel at all. It’s a collection of standalone-able stories with no continuous main character. Instead the main character of each story has some connection, whether profound or profoundly casual, with a main character in a previous story. A few of the characters appear in multiple stories, some only in one. What interested me about this structure is that, off the bat it sounded similar to the structure of the first draft of a novel I just finished writing. In mine, there are three loosely connected stories where the throughline is a shared set of events.

It turns out the shape of this story is nothing like mine. Oh, and in my opinion Egan’s story actually does have a main character. Time.

Over the course of the book, a couple of characters (I think it’s a couple, it may have only been the one) refer to Time as a Goon. The book is called A Visit From the Goon Squad. The one consistent theme that appears throughout the book in various guises is that of the effects of time, in particular as relates to memory. I would argue that there is a main character after all.

Interestingly enough, I was recently involved in a workplace chat that found its way to the topic of memory – specifically childhood memories. I made the point that all memory is constructed (as is all experience of the world) and that while we have to act as though our memories are accurate in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we shouldn’t necessarily trust that they are accurate. Someone else pointed out that people who stay in their hometown and hang out with the same people from high school tend to reinforce (a version of) their remembered experience through reminiscing whereas those of us who moved away (in this case to China) don’t – and when we do go back (for reunions and the like) our memories of high school can vary greatly from those of the people who stayed.

And yes, I work with some pretty unusual people.

Egan treats memory in much the same way. Characters remember different elements of their shared experience, remember the same things differently, and in some cases don’t remember anything much at all. Time really is a goon.

The stories in this book vary quite widely in style, suiting themselves to the point of view character, but none quite so much as the 12th story. It’s written not in prose, but in presentation slides (no, actually presentation slides, like in a business meeting), and it’s brilliantly done. I don’t really know how to describe it any better than that. You should just read it. It’s amazing and I stand in awe of Egan’s talent in pulling this off. It seems like it should be too gimmicky to fly, but it not only flies, it soars.

It’s called Great Rock and Roll Pauses and, just as the songs mentioned in it are defined in large part by their pauses, so too is this story defined by the gaps caused by the way in which it’s presented (pardon the pun). It also ties back into the fragmented nature of memory depicted elsewhere, and to the idea that we build full stories about the past based on the bits and pieces we hold on to. In this story we are given only the smallest pieces of information, and yet it is a full and satisfying story. The whole book is enjoyable, but this story by itself is worth the price of admission. It even makes up for having read (some of) The Death of the Heart.

Go and read it.

The next book(s) in my reading challenge are C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, which I will hopefully be able to finish this week. From what I recall of Lewis, his prose is a fairly easy read.

You know, for the past week or two I’ve been walking around thinking I’d fallen at the first hurdle with this reading project. In a way I have – in that it’s taken me three weeks or so and I still haven’t finished the first book on the list – but the truth is, I don’t intend to finish it. So there.

I take this as a sign of growth, actually.

I really struggled with this book. I couldn’t force myself to be interested in any of the characters. None of them seem to actually do anything, and it felt very much like work to make myself pick the thing up and read it. Every time I did pick it up, half of my mind was occupied with thinking of things I’d rather be reading.

So I stopped.

I read about a third of the book before I put it down permanently. I’m sure I was probably only a few pages away from something interesting – some fascinating little character quirk or wrinkle of conversation – but I just couldn’t bear the thought of forcing myself past any more boring to get there.

And that’s a real step forward for me.

I used to be of the mind that if I started reading a book, no matter how much I disliked it, I would finish the damned thing. In fact, this is only the second novel in my life that I’ve started and not finished. The first was the fourth book in Jean M. Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear series which was so poorly written that I have to suspect it was published as a practical joke (on readers) or that Ms. Auel had some sort of ‘leverage’ on someone high up over at Random House.

The Death of the Heart is not nearly as bad as that. Bowen’s prose is competent if not terribly interesting and the book isn’t bad per se, it’s just that it isn’t very good, and I have a whole list of very good books ahead of me. So many of them, in fact, that it really accentuates my lack of interest in this one.

And life’s too short to spend it reading books you don’t like.

If you are interested in unsympathetic characters that talk in vague circles about uninteresting things and where nothing much happens, this book is very much for you. As for me, I’m moving on to Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From The Goon Squad which I’ve already started, and which I’m very excited to continue.