matthewoubre

** spoiler alert ** (Note: When my opinion is so absolutely opposite of the majority of the readers of a book, I feel a bit more than just the star-rating is necessary. In this case, it's not difficult to explain why I have the opinion I do.) I was very excited when I started this book. We live on Clinch Mountain near to Clinch River and not that far from Oak Ridge. Since I was born in the 50s, the development of The Bomb, has always interested me. That it's written by a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist seemed to be just icing on the cake. Imagine my surprise when the cake turned out to be a cow patty. In no particular order, here are a few of the things that irked me to no end. The Name Game Each time I read a character's name or another one was introduced, I found myself cringing. You know that annoying guy who talks too loud at parties, who laughs too loud while making moronic observations that he finds incredibly clever? Know how when you don't laugh, he announces that you just don't get him? Know the frustration that--because you were raised to be polite--you can't bring yourself to tell him that you do get him--that you get he's an idiot? That's something along the lines of how I feel about Wiggins' little name game. There's Fos - Get it? Like phosphorescence Huh? Huh? Do you get it? Ray Foster (real name of Fos) - Like a ray of light. Bet you didn't get that, did you? Flash - Again like light but this time also like photography! Are you sure you are getting the light motif? Opal - A semi-precious stone that's pale and seems to glow. See? More light! Lightfoot - Duh! Ramona de la Luz - And here's light in another language! Pearl - Very similar to Opal. The Main Characters Even though I managed to grit my teeth and get past the heavy-handed naming, I could not get past the basic disgust I felt for the three main characters. They weren't too bad at first, a bit two dimensional and inane, but bearable. But then came the Flash and Lally affair. Here's a grown man messing around with a young girl--a girl who was at the most 13 or 14 years old. A grown man who got her pregnant. A grown man who didn't take her to the hospital but rather let her bleed out in his car because of a botched abortion. And what do Flash's two friends do? They support him as much as they can. Never mind about the girl. (She is never mentioned again.) Never mind that he's a worthless piece of crap. He's their friend, and the reader is supposed to buy into the premise that Flash's conviction was just brought about because the DA is Flash's brother and jealous. The reader is supposed to feel oh-so-sorry for Flash and Fos and Opal. Well, this reader didn't! One of the worst aspects of this part of the story is that I was so disgusted with Flash and the Fosters that I found myself coming down on the side of the KKK when they tore up the studio. As bad as that was, it got even worse when it came to the murder/suicide of Opal and Fos. What nice people they were, what good parents. So kind. So considerate. I mean Fos even went so far as to half-heartedly ask one of the neighbors if she would take care of Lightfoot should something happen. When she said she couldn't, Fos didn't press the issue or even bother to ask anyone else. No big deal. It's only his son. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to interrupt his plans. He overdoses himself and Opal with morphine on the night before Lightfoot's birthday. What a joy for a little boy to wake up on his birthday and find his parents dead. And since Fos had made no plans whatsoever for Lightfoot so the authorities have no choice but to cart him off to an orphanage. There's no need to go into the rest of the story as there's not all that much story there--and I'm pretty disgusted with even thinking about Flash. Style As if the characters and names weren't bad enough, there was Wiggins' style on top of it all. I never could figure out if it was because she flat out wanted to annoy her readers or if she was just being pretentious. Single paragraphs run over several pages. Sentences run on forever and ever and ever and ever. Quotation marks do not exist. Dialog is mixed in with thoughts so you have to puzzle out who said what, who thought what, and who didn't say anything at all. By the end, I didn't care who did/said/thought what. I didn't care for anything but getting through this mess. It had come down to me against Wiggins, and I wasn't going to let her win. I'm reminded of a restaurant in France my husband and some of his colleagues went to several years ago. The restaurant had the reputation for being one of the best in the world--and the Michelin stars to back it up. After all their anticipation, they were terribly disappointed. It was typical whole lot of nothing on big white plate cuisine, and if that weren't bad enough, the specialty of the house was raw pigeon. Marianne Wiggins' Evidence of Things Unseen is a whole lot of nothing, and what is there is as unappetizing as raw pigeon. P.S. Apparently Wiggins couldn't be bothered to do anything as mundane as glance at a map. The Norris Dam is on the Clinch River, not the Tennessee River. Fos and Opal lived on the Clinch River, not the Tennessee.

2022-11-14 13:44