Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
I had very high expectations for Kazuo Ishiguro's very popular, relatively recent novel Never Let Me Go, and unfortunately, they were not quite met. Ishiguro's language is simple in a beautiful way, and typically I love stories that meander like this. However, in spite of its eerie sense of impending doom (which was nicely done though anti-climactic), Never Let Me Go was too vague for my liking. I felt that the characters were shallow, and after some nice, slowly paced build up, the big reveal was handled in an unattractively nonchalant way. Honestly, as I reread what I've just typed, this sounds like my kind of novel, but for some reason, Ishiguro just didn't pull it off for me. A solid read, there's just not anything to get excited about.
As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner (1930)
I assume this sacrilege, but I pretty much hated As I Lay Dying. Criminally, perhaps, I had never read a William Faulkner novel before, and I was under the impression this was as good of a place as any to start. So, I'm going to guess that Faulkner is just not for me. I'm not really a fan of this stream of consciousness style, and call me lazy, but I loathed the novel's horrific grammar and Faulkner's prose as a whole. That prose made it easy to confuse and lose track of the ridiculous number of characters and their narration. I won't deny that the plot in As I Lay Dying, which chronicles a family's journey to bury their wife and mother, and all the messed up details within, is quite brilliant. But, admittedly, that was after I read the Wikipedia article. Whenever I get the itch for a good, dark southern gothic tale, I guess I'll just stick with John Steinbeck and Cormac McCarthy.
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