Tuesday, April 5, 2011

The NEIGHBORS r WATCHING - Debra Ginsberg ***

This is about a bunch of neighbors and all their supposedly dirty secrets (Desperate Housewives? Sort of). Husband Joe, screwing neighbor slut, Jess, his pregnant teenager Diana, moves in with him. You get a lot of internal narrative, little dialogue and rarely any action. I read 94 pages before there was even a hint teenage pregnant outcast's baby has a daddy. Then of course it was an 'accident' she got knocked up.

Some stuff is so subtle I don't have a clue what the point is. Like when Jess/Joe are screwing and some kind of point is trying to be made about their relationship? Or what she does for a living? Or why they didn't use the master bedroom? WTF? IDK. That happens more often than I'd like. I don't have ESP, I actually need to be told stuff that's in someone else's imagination. u?

Start off; one day pregnant girl shows up at pops. Time passes...whoosh you are now into her 9th month...time passes again "somehow" and boom she has a kid. It's like on a stage with the winged cardboard sign "TIME PASSES" flitting from stage left to stage right. Diana rarely does any of her own thinking or talking, or expressing of herself but everyone else does. Someone (Sam?) thinks about preggo's horrible shitty life...and um...how the fuck would she know?

Then after delivery of child, mommy goes missing and the cops aren't called for DAYS (or weeks), her mom isn't notified for WEEKS...I mean, really???

I guess I'd call it psychological angst- the internal narrative dialogue that I can't stand. This book is pretty much all that b.s. It's not too horrible really, but seems I push on 'tediously'. I wouldn't have a problem suddenly dropping it past the expiration date. There must be readers thinking this is some intellectual, current-topic literary work but I'm not in that illustrious group.

No comments:

Post a Comment