Friday, June 04, 2010

Plot

Did you find the plot engaging? Did it seem smoothly drawn to you or a bit clunky here and there?
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5 comments:

Erin said...

I quite enjoyed the plot, right up until the introduction of the Chalfens and KEVIN. It seemed too late to be introducing all these new characters. I didn't care about these people and wished the story would move back to the two central families. I also wished we could have had more on Alsana and Clara, who I found so intriguing at the beginning of the story.

2:47 PM, June 07, 2010
kc said...

I couldn't agree more.

If the Chalfens were to figure so largely in the narrative, it seems like they should have been introduced early on.

I found them so irritating and strange and often hardly believable. There was so little to recommend them to a reader's interest beyond caricature. They were almost like sit-com personalities.

I was reading very avidly too until the KEVIN stuff came along. Once the plot veered away into that and all the supermouse hoo-ha my interest waned considerably. I also thought the quality of writing and character observation slid a little downhill at that point too, with long, overwrought passages where a sentence or two could seemingly have accomplished the same purpose.

Millat was just not an interesting enough person (neither was the robotic Magid) for me to care much about. I mean, I just didn't see why we should be terribly interested in these two guys. They seemed so one-dimensional.

3:42 PM, June 07, 2010
cl said...

Well, KEVIN made me laugh ("We realize we have an acronym problem"), but I admit I started skimming in those sections, probably missing out a bit on what turned Millat so much.

I think in all the racial and religious subtleties that played out, the Chalfens were the most guilty. They jumped to a lot of conclusions about Irie and Millat based on their heritage and looks. They weren't even redneck about it; they were that odious brand of liberalism that they put on display in politics and in sending their children to public schools, but they clearly had no diversity in their personal lives.

I think I'm getting away from plot. Anyway, yes, they showed up abruptly, but it made sense that Millat and Irie, especially, would encounter some signficant, "English rose" kind of influence that would challenge them to move forward or backward.

4:16 PM, June 07, 2010
cl said...

I went in with a lot of expectations about Archie, and yet he was a minor player, too, even though he began and ended the story. That actually reminds me of the brother from "Let the Great World Spin" -- his narrative opens the story, so it's odd how he's tucked away until the very end. I don't know that it's bad plotting, and it's original -- just my expectations that the hero kicks down the door on the first page and we stay with what he's all about to the finish.

Erin: Agreed on Alsana and Clara. They all seemed to play second fiddle to Alsana's husband. Alsana got more play later in the story as the more concerned parent about the Chalfens, but Clara -- so interesting! so developing off-screen, with the feminist classes -- we never go back to find out how she blossomed. Or how she tolerated Archie and so on.

4:20 PM, June 07, 2010
Erin said...

Yeah, I wondered why, too, the book opened with a really engaging narrative about Archie, and then he sort of faded from the story. Throughout the book I wanted to know more about Archie and Clara and their relationship.

4:24 PM, June 08, 2010

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