Don’t stand, don’t stand so, don’t stand so close to me
Halfway through The Rehearsal I abandoned the book. I wanted to keep going but it had begun to feel like homework. It’s very impressive, stylish, worthy of the accolades, but I was looking for human beings to feel for. The novel is about a high school sex scandal—a music teacher is discovered to be having an affair with a student—but you don’t actually meet the protagonists. Instead the author presents us with fictional characters who imagine themselves as protagonists in the ongoing drama as if they were actors auditioning for roles in a play. There’s also an acting school in which the students are trying to get into character. The result is to distance the reader from the story so it feels like you’re watching ants in an aquarium. Clever as hell, but cold. I read novels because I want to feel, not think about feeling. I already do too much of that in real life.
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August 17th, 2010 at 01:04
Felt the same way when I read Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. At the end of the book, I felt like I was bludgeoned by an unrelenting display of verbal gymnastics and sophisticated world view. She seemed determined to dazzle. It didn’t help that a photo of her showed that, appearance-wise, she is fiercely attractive as well. Beautiful, brainy, but in White Teeth, grim and humorless.