Sara Levine (1)

A black comedy, in which the narrator is not so much undependable as full of bad choices, misperceptions, self-absorptions, fixations, and delusions. Her unexpected interpretations of the transparently caring, annoyed, or indulgent attitudes of her friends and family provide the humor. It's a difficult setup for a novel, because the kinds of misinterpretations have to be continuously varied so that the narrator isn't always simply imagining selfish or self-justifying explanations for other show more people's unselfish or critical concerns. It works best when the narrator's mistaken perceptions are unexpected, and it avoids what I imagine must have been a temptation to have the narrator become progressively more deluded. show less

I read this after hearing about it in Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist. I absolutely LOVED this book. It's hilarious but simultaneously so clearly captures this element of being lost in your 20s. The use of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island to anchor this novel is an inspired choice. Clearly my life needs more horn-blowing!

Also, I was reading this on my commute and someone on the train mistook it for the original Treasure Island, and went on and on about how much he'd loved that book as a show more teenage boy, which was so appropriate and added a nice meta level of hilarity in my life. show less

Aunt Rose puts a heroic effort into avoiding her anxiety while babysitting her nephew for a week. In the process she also avoids an unfolding catastrophic failure at her company, her best friend's feelings, and her dog's murder of another dog and the dead dog's subsequent possession of her nephew.

If your view of a happy ending is that the protagonist becomes aware of her own motivations, then this is not a happy ending book. Levine just keeps tacking on disasters that you think would be show more impossible to ignore and yet Rose does her level best to pretend they aren't happening. She thinks she attains enlightenment at the end of the book but she's just ascended to a new higher plane of avoidance. show less

Imagine that you have decided to take Stevenson's [Treasure Island] as your self-help book. Wait - imagine that you are a sociopathically un-self-aware 20-something, and you've decided to take [Treasure Island] as your self-help book. You work out that the book's Core Values are BOLDNESS, RESOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE and HORN-BLOWING, and you try and put them into practice in your daily life.

When our unnamed narrator attempts this, she rapidly brings chaos into her own life and the lives of show more those around her. This part of the book was hilarious - I laughed out loud every couple of pages, as her behaviour became bigger and wilder. But at some point the reader notices the clues scattered through the book, suggesting what she might have been like before she adopted this boldness.

If there was a problem with this book, it was the disconnect between the two sides of her personality. She's just so good at being a larger-than-life, monstrous character - it's hard to see how she transformed from someone so different. Worse, I can understand why she preferred the new persona, destructive and heedless of others as it was. I was a little disappointed by the resolution of the book, which leaves her wiser but more restrained: a nicer person to know, for sure, but a less fun one to read about.

But the twists in the book mean that I think next time I read it I will see more in it; and I am sure I will read it again.

Sometimes I consider BOLDNESS a quality one has or does not have; other times I think of BOLDNESS as a quality one chooses to cultivate or to let wither on the vine. show less