Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... The beginners (edition 2011)by Rebecca Wolff
Work InformationThe Beginners by Rebecca Wolff
None Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Very weird. It took me about half-way through to finally get into it and really feel connected to the story. I love weird, odd books - but this one was just OK. ( ) This is one of those books that make me feel stupid after I read it. The premise of the story sounded good to me but, much like, [b:A Reliable Wife|4929705|A Reliable Wife|Robert Goolrick|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1267035347s/4929705.jpg|4995331], it seemed the story was lost in a lot of the detail. I expected there to be a mystery or a supernatural element in this book but I don't think there was anything. I didn't care about who the Motherwells turned out to be, I just wanted Ginger to stop hanging out with them so I didn't have to read anymore. I only finished this book because I kept telling myself it had to get better but, for me, it didn't. I didn't see how the mystery of the town played into the story. I had read reviews that said this would be frightening. I didn't feel that at all. Mostly I was bored. Maybe this book is too "high-level" for me. Also, I don't mind sex in a book but when it has a point. This seemed like gratuitous sex. Not good. Rarely, very rarely do I actually write a review on LibraryThing, but "hot mess" just keeps spinning in my head to the point that I have to write it down! I did finish this. But boy, it was outrageous. This book was crazy, and the under age sex was just audacious. Dear God, thank goodness I'm done. The cover is kind of mesmerizing though. I don't remember why I picked this book up off the new-book-shelf at the library. The book flap had a number of things that would usually hold my interest, new england towns, ghost stories, weird relationships. The narrator is unconvincing, the plot seems to just give up somewhere after the first third of the book, the sex scenes were gratuitously detailed while also being uninteresting. Don't read this book.
That trust is undermined on many levels, making it difficult for the book's elements to come together. Sometimes the issue is voice: It's hard to imagine a teenager, no matter how intelligent, thinking as Ginger does, "A child does not perceive herself as such — not in the way that adults grow ever more concerned with their status, their chronos, as it shows itself ever more clearly on their bodies and in the shortening days ahead." Sometimes the issue is with resonance: Ginger sees a man's penis for the first time and describes its appearance without any intellectual, sexual or emotional reaction. Other times, it's an odd detail, like time frames that don't match up — graffiti from 1986 is faded and painted over, but a song from 1982 has just gotten popular. These ill-fitting pieces seem far from the intentional, edgy choices Wolff has made as founding editor of the avant-garde literary journal Fence. The tensions at play on the page in "The Beginners" are awkward, disjointed; the book works against itself and never fully coheres. . But the elegant, gauzy prose doesn’t entirely compensate for the novel’s weak plot turns. Ginger’s growing obsession with the Motherwells, to the point that she spends nights in their home, strains credibility both because of the age differential and Raquel’s pomposity—when she’s not outright condescending toward Ginger, she’s spouting pedantically about parents, sex and Wick’s witchy past. Theo, meanwhile, is so underdrawn as to be a cipher, existing largely as a symbol of sexual possibility. Those unrealistic characterizations feel intentional on Wolff’s part, not signs of first-novel clumsiness. But they do make Ginger’s character less compelling—so that, by the end, when the airiness of the prose must be set aside and Ginger is forced to make some difficult decisions, the drama feels muted and anticlimactic. Admirable for its tone and insight into the teenage mind, but with a few mechanical difficulties. nteressant en onzeker De beginners is een goed geschreven, speels verhaal, dat je af en toe meesleurt naar de donkere krochten van Gingers brein. Een interessant en onzeker meisje op wie we allemaal een beetje lijken. Mooi in De beginners is het beeld dat wordt geschetst van het kleinburgerlijke Amerika. Nu eens geen glamoureus succesverhaal, maar een heel gewoon leven in een doorsneedorp. Mooi debuut, ik geef een 8.
Fantasy.
Fiction.
Literature.
HTML:The chilling, hypnotically beautiful story of a girl whose coming of age is darkened by the secret history of her small New England town. Theo and Raquel Motherwell are the only newcomers to the sleepy town of Wick in fifteen-year-old Ginger Pritt's memory. Hampered by a lingering innocence while her best friend, Cherry, grows more and more embroiled with boys, Ginger is instantly attracted to the worldliness and sophistication of this dashing couple. But the Motherwells may be more than they seem. As Ginger's keen imagination takes up the seductive mystery of their past, she also draws closer to her town's darker history-back to the days of the Salem witch trials-and every new bit of information she thinks she understands leads only to more questions. Who-or what-exactly, are the Motherwells? And what is it they want with her? Both a lyrical coming-of-age story and a spine-tingling tale of ghostly menace, The Beginners introduces Rebecca Wolff as an exciting new talent in fiction. No library descriptions found. |
LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumRebecca Wolff's book The Beginners was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |