Kaaterskill Falls (Allegra Goodman)
This book seems rather flat and played out to me. It’s one of those stories that encompasses an entire town of characters, whose point of views are dissimilar, even opposite, and whose storylines don’t arch from beginning through middle to end. Where no one character reaches a new understanding or finds resolution and instead we are meant to see the how the meaning is in the interplay between the stories, the truth and meaning when we combine all of our different meaninglessness together. If you read books — or watch movies — I think you know exactly what I mean.
This is Goodman’s first novel, which might account for the shallow telling, and I was recommended her second — Intuition (2006). Strangely, it was nominated for the National Book Award. Not so strangely, it didn’t receive it. Goodman also wrote the book in 1998, when the artifice of mutliple POVs was likely fresher and more interesting, so I’ll give her that. Outside the narrative structure, the book has little to offer except insight into the Orthodox Jewish community: gender roles, family structure, holidays, rituals, prayers, belief. That’s definitely somewhere I”ve never been before and it was fun to be a tourist. However, I just kept expecting that the journey of the moving words, black and white and measured as railroad tracks, would arrive… at something, at somewhere. To give me something to show for taking the trip.
But no. This was an interesting tale that was somewhat entertaining and will likely seep into the ground water of my subconsious to combine with so many other somewhat entertaining stories.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars - Mediocre vacation reading
Fiction |