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Loading... The Flying Troutmans: A Novel (original 2008; edition 2009)by Miriam Toews
Work InformationThe Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews (2008)
  
No current Talk conversations about this book.   ) juliechabon | Nov 13, 2022 |  b.masonjudy | Feb 7, 2021 | I'm not even kidding. I have (a few) good things to say about A Court of Thorns and Roses, and that's my least favourite book of the year. And yet somehow this book was so incredibly bad that... I have less good to say about it than ACOTAR. Trust me. This is saying a lot. Things I disliked: - Hattie. Hattie was horrible. She spent the entire book whining, and nothing about her was interesting, and also can we address the fact that she read her niece's journal??? Without asking?? And then was just like well I'm her guardian so it's fine that I totally just violated her privacy because I had good intentions and I was worried about her. Still uncool. Majorly uncool. - Thebes and Logan were boring. I didn't hate them, I just didn't care. They were caricatures with no real personality, and were basically just walking stereotypes of what teenagers and kids are supposed to act like. - The plot was dumb. Everything was way too convenient, and there were no stakes whatsoever. Also there were many parts that just... didn't work. Like the time they managed to cross the border? And she wasn't their parent? And the border guard was aware of this fact and he let them across anyways?? Has the author ever actually tried to cross the border with minors? Because I've tried to cross this same border with just one parent and almost got turned away because I needed a signed note from my other parent saying I wasn't being kidnapped. This part was hella unbelievable to me. And also why the hell did Hattie lie about what they were doing and how long they were staying??? She could have been honest about the amount of time, and much more believably said "I'm taking them to see their father." which was... the truth. Unlike the ridiculous story she cooked up. - This book was dreadfully boring. I often found myself staring at the copyright page instead of reading, because it was genuinely more interesting. You may thing I'm kidding or exaggerating. I'm not. - The writing was NOT my style. At all. I found it really hard to read, and rambly, and just overall not very good. - There were so many random things that just had... no relevance whatsoever? And it was like okay. Sure. Now some random guy is asking if Manitoba is in California. And now Logan is hooking up with some girl in the back of a car and he looks like an alien apparently. And now they have a dog. - THERE WEREN'T ANY FREAKING QUOTATION MARKS AND I COULD NEVER TELL IF SOMEONE WAS TALKING! - Everything. Things I liked: - I think I liked one line near the end of the book where the title came in. But also I had such low standards from reading the rest of this book that my liking one line probably isn't saying much. ***Initial Reaction, November 2, 2018*** FINALLY. DONE. WHAT A RELIEF THIS BOOK WAS AWFUL. I... I can't even decide what to rate this... Two stars? 1.5 stars? I don't even know. I'm going to leave it at two for now, but... I might lower it when I actually review this. RTC. (  ) irisssssssss | Jun 17, 2020 |  ) viviennestrauss | Jun 13, 2020 |  ) Smits | Jan 20, 2019 |
 [S]he shows with refreshing vividness how feelings of anger, betrayal and rage can simmer into something stranger and richer, somehow sadder and yet more joyful. The Flying Troutmans takes a bleak premise, adds pitch-perfect, fully human characters and makes it, if not laugh-out-loud funny, at least difficult to read without a couple of sniggers per chapter.  The resulting confection, though fluent and amusingly written, forces the reader to suspend disbelief until every imaginative muscle burns with the effort. . . [a] tiresome and manipulative novel. Toews steps over the camp and sentimentality of "Little Miss Sunshine" and displays a sharper sense of the grinding tragedy of mental illness. . . Toews is a genius at recording the everyday weirdness of young people, their capricious vacillation between screw-you sarcasm and tender pleading for affirmation.  The vernacular narrative, which had spark, specificity and rueful wit throughout the novel’s opening chapters, becomes sloppy and gabbling, like a blog hastily banged out. . . Finally, nothing about “The Flying Troutmans” feels authentic, not the characters and not their psychology, and certainly not the American landscape they blast through, leaving dust in the slipstream, but very little else.
Meet the Troutmans. Hattie is living in Paris, but has been dumped by her boyfriend. Min, her sister back in Canada, is going through a dark period. So when Hattie receives a call from Min's eleven year-old son begging her to return to Canada, she knows she has to go. No library descriptions found. |
LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumMiriam Toews's book The Flying Troutmans was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.  Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.73)
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