Off-topic: Laura Lippman’s latest novel

It is called Sunburn. I got to it because it was praised in reviews and because its setting is a town on the way to the beach where we vacation every summer. She calls the town Belleville, but I assume it is Bridgeville, which we have occasionally driven through but more often bypassed. I am less than half way through.

I would describe the novel as a literary strip-tease. Each chapter is short, and you learn new aspects of the characters bit by bit, chapter by chapter. It turns out that the main characters are shady, wanton, violent, and deceptive.

For me, the trouble is that nothing about the characters is alluring, so that I am not captivated by the strip-tease. My guess is that I am going to bail out before the show is over.

2 thoughts on “Off-topic: Laura Lippman’s latest novel

  1. Tyler linked to an interview with Karl Ove Knausgård a while back in which Knausgård said something to the effect that only about 2 or 3 good novels get published each decade. Having just listened to his Autumn driving from Richmond to St. Louis, I can testify that it is not likely to be remembered as one of those 2 or 3. Nevertheless, I agree with him about not being thrilled with a lot of what little contemporary literature that I do read.. After perusing her wikipedia entry, it seems that Lippman, like Knausgård, is one of those writers who, as people, are at least as interesting as their writing, if not more so. With this in mind I’ve been sticking to classics and can report that the recent Pevear & Volokhonsky translation of Pushkin’s prose was a rewarding read. Not all of of it is equally brilliant, but The Captain’s Daughter alone was worth the price of admission.

  2. At the risk of changing the subject…

    I am embarrassed (but not too much) by a personal habit of reading almost no novels. At some my reading habits slipped entirely into non-fiction.

    Is this common? Is it documented that many people (a noteworthy proportion) read less fiction as they age, even if they continue to read a lot for pleasure (or a mix of pleasure / scholarly interest)?

    These days I treat fiction as background ethnography–for example at some point I was interested in the Sudanese urban middle class in exile, so _Minaret_ by Leila Abu Leila is something I managed to read. _Black robe_ by Brian More was worth reading and helps me to imagine the European contact with native Americans.

    My habit of not reading fiction is correlated with my tendency to never read any book from beginning to end. And with my tendency to shelf browse in areas of interest in the library.

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