But how did it all end?

Book: How It All Began

Author: Penelope Lively

Published: 2011 (Viking)

Pages: 229

In the first couple sentences, an old lady is robbed. In the next three or four chapters, this robbery and her subsequent broken hip shift pre-established events and schedules so that her married daughter falls in love with one of the old lady's reading students, the old lady's employer's niece meets a guy who swindles her out of business, and the niece's lover is outed as an adulterer. 

Promising start! None of the coincidences are contrived, although an unnamed narrative pops up to harp on them three or for times. So then what happened?

Uh, well, you know. Life. Things. 

The employer's sections were the most fun because he was a gone-to-seed academic historian who had no idea of the giant gap between his grand ideas and their banal actualities. The rest of the affected people, most especially his niece, were refreshingly practical about their situations, which got me to like them but did not result in an ending that tied everyone together again. I was half-hoping and half-dreading that kind of ending but figured the rest of the book had enough sense to do it well. 

But I never got to find out, because everybody just drifted apart. In a coda that was completely unnecessary seeing as how we were told he never affected the story ever again, the author tells us that the mugger was shortly robbed himself.  

Well all right then. 

Take it back.

Book: If Jack’s In Love

Author: Stephen Wetta

Published: 2011 (Amy Einhorn Books)

Pages: 354

The only reason any of these characters exist is to talk about each other in a judgey way. That includes the 12-year-old “genius” protagonist, quotes used because his smartypants qualifications are that he’s on the school honor roll. That’s IT, and it’s mentioned like twice as offhand remarks. Nowhere else is he mentioned doing or even caring about anything intellectual.

His brother may or may not have murdered a rival high schooler, by the way. BY THE WAY. Wetta gets the show/tell dynamic all wrong; he skims over the interesting scenes with bloodless narration only to zoom in on the most repetitive information drop conversations ever. His characters also slam in and out of southern dialect like the many-doored set of a stage farce. Also, there’s a Jewish jeweler who has magic rings, maybe, and is definitely way too interested in the protagonist’s physical progress with his grade-school girlfriend. The protagonist’s dad is thinking about robbing the jeweler’s store.

None of these plot threads come close to touching each other. It sort of reminds me of  the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode when Mac and Charlie go to a masked sex party only to find it full of disgusting people and they lost interest before everything comes together.  

In other words: I want my $12.50 back, Barnes and Noble. You. Me. Receipt. Monday.