The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright was our book club selection for August, and it was uniformly panned. The primary criticism was that we hated all of the characters, particularly the narrator. That's a hard one to get past.
This is the story of a woman who is married to a man who is never really painted in a negative light. That woman falls in love (we all though it sounded much more like lust though) with a married man who has a little girl with some sort of mental disability who also suffers from seizures. The woman eventually leaves her husband and treats him worse than you would treat your worst enemy despite the fact that she is the one who has been cheating and despite the fact that she also really sounds like a bit of a drunk and not such a great catch. The married man who is wildly in love with her (according to her) moves in with her but doesn't really leave his wife. In fact, on Christmas he goes home to his family and leaves some flowers and booze in the toolshed for her to find after he sends her an afterthought of a text message late that night. It's melting your heart, right? And that's it. End of story.
I actually think I liked it more than some of the other members of our club. Wouldn't have guessed that from my review, huh? Enright is clearly a talented writer. The problem was that I felt like she wanted me to sympathize with the narrator, and I just didn't. She was kind of a bitch to everyone - her husband, her sister, the child of her lover, and she seemed to justify it all because of this magical love affair. I know what it's like to have magic, to be truly, madly, head over heels in love. I don't think Enright does. This so clearly wasn't it. A married man who likes having sex with someone who is not his wife does not a love story make.
No comments:
Post a Comment