A blogging experiment: I am live-blogging the reading of Jane Smiley’s Ten Days in the Hills. livebooking? Anyway, here we go…

5/25: Ugh. One of the main protagonist is talking about the Iraq war? And in the absence of any other conflicts so far, it sounds like genuine angst about the morality of war. Meh. When was this book written? So 2003. Very “preachery to the choiry”.  

Stop with the kissing. We get it, these people are good kissers. And the long descriptions of the old guy’s penis is kinda gross. I love Jane Smiley, let’s remember this and it’s still readable. I think the “My lovemaking with Elena” movie idea is stupid. I wouldn’t watch it. I don’t know any of the old movie star references.  

5/27: Second chapter. Whew. More characters. Some good simmering egos with nice character conflict potential. Nice moment with the guy crying in the movie theater. Although, I am a touch annoyed by the continuing invitations from characters and text to view each scene through the movie lens. I get it. It’s Hollywood. More references to old movies I don’t get.

5/28: I wish she had a different editor who was a little more of a slash and cut type. There’s good stuff here, and it gets totally drowned out in all the noise. People are constantly saying very interesting things to each all the time using too many words. And they needn’t. 

Again with the Iraq War. It seems to be gelling into a central theme, which I am not happy about. The timing is all wrong for such a plot point. Who wants to read the rationales for not going to war/going to war in fiction form? I mean, I don’t. Writing against the war no longer has the teeth it did 4 years ago.

Also this.

Nina–petite and ballerinalike, with wiry muscles and a lot of surface tension. (Pg 57)

What does that mean? This is what surface tension is. I admit to being completely distracted by this sentence–trying to picture this taut, shiny, liquid woman.

I like Elena, but not Max.

5/30: I have warmed to the things in the book that so far bothered me…somewhat. Especially the dialogue. I kinda like it. Each person has some little nice nugget of story to tell. After you get over the initial annoyingness of that, the stories are nice.

I am no longer liking Elena. Or Isabel. I don’t like people who get all angsty about world events. In a book, it’s particularly grating. But whatever. Smiley can write fully-realized, 3-dimensional characters which keeps you reading. 

6/2:  There is so much chatter about current events, and opinions and story-telling between these characters. I hate this part (particularly Elena’s neurosis about the Iraq war) and it makes up a size-able chunk of the novel.  I also really don’t like the graphic sex scenes, they often feel really discordant with the plot. Ex. the scene with Charlie and Monique. Why is that in there? It’s like a bad porn plot with good writing, which was admittedly enjoyable to read.

What I did like a lot was this. The complicated mother-daughter relationship between Zoe and Isabel and Isabel’s unreasonable resentment of her mother. Zoe and Paul’s odd romance–watching the see-sawing of power between them. The sweet poignancy of the Isabel and Stoney’s love.

At the last 20pages or so. I really want it to end, and the pointless story-telling from the characters is making me impatient. I must not be a dialogue reader. Why must everyone have a story for everything? We need some quiet time in this book. Everyone seems to have a movie idea (or movie scene) they want to punish their audience with. I think this is a good book to read if you are a film-maker, it forces you to visualize story narration through a camera. Grating on a non-film chick like me, though.

The End: Surprise twist end. Minor twist. Shrug. I am gonna grade this book. It’s a B-

P.S. It’s gratifying to find this NYT review after writing this post. I am in total agreement.

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