My Rating: 3 starsI really really wanted to love this book like so many of my fellow readers did, but unfortunately, this one didn't quite work out for me. Don't get me wrong — Elizabeth McCracken is a great writer and her ability to use humor in the cleverest of ways is one of the things that I appreciate most about her works (this book was no exception). I also found the premise of the story very touching, with McCracken's indirect tribute to her mother through the narrator's recounting of her her memories (though of course, as McCracken makes clear, this is not a memoir, and the narrator, though also a writer who shares other similar details with herself, is technically not her). Having said that, the story overall was a bit hard to follow, as there wasn't much of a plot — it was mostly the narrator's thoughts and memories that would jump back and forth from past to present. It actually got to the point where I would be halfway through the book and have no idea what I just read. There were also moments where I had to stop reading in order to attend to a life issue, but then afterwards, I didn't really feel like picking the book back up again (though of course, I eventually did pick it up and finish, since I have a problem with DNFing books once I start them).
While overall I was glad to have read this — and there were certainly aspects I related to and appreciated, such as the narrator's complicated relationship with her mother and also trying to reconcile that with her sensibilities as a writer (hence the struggle of whether to actually write about her mother or not) — the back and forth was a bit too much for me. At times, the story felt like it was all over the place and that ended up detracting from the emotional aspect a bit.
Even though this one fell a little short for me, I'm still interested in reading McCracken's other works at some point and having a different reading experience.
Received ARC from Ecco Press via NetGalley.
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