The End of The Story, by Lydia Davis
Title: The End of the Story
Author: Lydia Davis
Published: 1995
Publisher: Picador
Pages: 231
Back Blurb: Mislabeled boxes, problems with visiting nurses, confusing notes, an outing to the county fair - such are the obstacles in the way of the unnamed narrator of The End of the Story as she attempts to organize her memories of a love affair into a novel. With compassion, wit, and what appears to be candor, she seeks to determine what she actually knows about herself and her past, but we begin to suspect, along with her, that given the elusiveness of memory and understanding, any tale retrieved from the past must be fiction.
Ok, honestly, I just cannot comprehend why someone would think this was a book worth reading at all, nevermind one that you must read before you die...
I can't remember the last time it took me so long to finish such a short book, particularly one that wasn't non-fiction. Reading this was torturous...I would wade through a few pages, struggling to pay attention, to care at all, until I just couldn't deal with it anymore. Come back later, repeat. At times, I was reduced to skimming. I never skim books like that. If I'd been reading this for any other reason, I would have chucked the book well before I got through the first chapter. Really.
In fairness, some of it does have to do with genre/subject matter. It is, as you can tell from the blurb, largely a book about a love affair. Books focusing solely/primarily on romances are really not my thing. I enjoy a good sub-plot involving romance in other books, that as a component, but that as a focus? Generally no, not at all, very very far down my list of things to read, somewhere behind textbooks on subjects that are not in my area of academic interest, just....not my thing at ALL. So perhaps, for people who enjoy reading novels focusing primarily if not totally on a relationship, this wouldn't have been as terrible...
However, that was hardly the only reason I detested this book. For one thing, there is the narrative framing of it. About half of it, overall, is a story about the relationship/love affair that the narrator had. The other half, intermixed throughout, is the narrator writing about the process of trying to write a novel about the affair. Now, honestly, does reading about someone trying to write sound all that interesting? Probably not...and if the person in question is well...I can't even find the words to describe the narrator. An example:
But at other times, I am really confused and uncomfortable. For instance, I am trying to seperate out a few pages to add to the novel and I want to put them together in one box, but I'm not sure how to label the box. I would like to write on it MATERIALS READY TO BE USED, but if I do that it may bring me bad luck, because the material may not be "ready." I thought of adding parentheses, and writing MATERIAL (READY) TO BE USED, but the word "ready" was still too strong despite the parentheses. I though of throwing in a question mark but that immediately introduced more doubt than I could stand....
and it goes on like that, on and on and reading it made me want to rip my hair out because there's such a thing as WRITING TOO MUCH DETAIL ABOUT THE MINUTIAE OF YOUR NEUROTIC THOUGHTS and I JUST DON'T CARE and NOT INTERESTING AT ALL.
Also, in these parts, she references things going on in narrators life at time of writing the novel, issues with her new (boyfriend, husband, partner?) Vincent, his senile father, etc., except never clarifies who these people are or why we should care about them at all, and so we don't care about them and to have them randomly brought back in every so often is jarring.
The parts about the affair are not much better. I didn't sympathize with the character at all. She becomes involved with a younger man, acts selfishly and basically treats him like shit throughout the relationship (and even in the parts where she is reflecting on her past behaviors and admits they were selfish, it still doesn't seem like she really understands what was wrong with her actions...), acts surprised when he breaks up with her, and then mopes, acts obsessive and basically STALKS him for months....like constantly calls, follows him to his job, invites him to parties and gets bothered when he declines to go with her, etc. The kind of thing I personally would have tried to get a restraining order or something if an ex of mine actually did in real life. Except, the way it was written, this all wasn't amusing, didn't make me feel anything other than annoyed with the character and with the fact that I was still stuck reading this drivel.
Far too much description of....well, everything. There was just...SO much included that I didn't feel needed to be there/that I didn't care about at all...parts where narrator goes on a walk and describes every damn thing she sees for paragraphs on end and for no real purpose really, just to be 'literary' or whatever, and dunno, i've read lots of 'literary' books and while not always hugely interesting, nothing that I can remember rubbed me the wrong way the way this book did...
also, random things mentioned and then dropped...narrator describes herself not in so many words but basically an alcoholic/habitually abusing alcohol in the very beginning of the novel and then this is just...never mentioned again. Um, ok? I get the whole concept of unreliable narrator, and I have read books where that literary mechanism was used very impressively, but this...
Basically, I didn't care about any of the characters, or what happened to them, at no point was I interested in what was going to happen next, just read in hopes of finally finishing the book so I could chuck it in the nearest bin. I guess in a way this might be the female version of the dissatisfied middle aged white guy novels oft. referred to in this community...
I don't know. I personally would not recommend this to anyone, ever, as anything but possibly kindle if you have a fireplace, but on the other hand, given that this book has multiple glowing reviews cited on the back/inside pages by Booklist, the New Yorker, Newsday, etc., and given just...the intensity of which I loathed it...perhaps it was me. Perhaps someone else might actually get something from reading this. Who knows. Personally, I'm not touching another piece of writing by Lydia Davis with a ten foot pole if I can help it.
:/
Author: Lydia Davis
Published: 1995
Publisher: Picador
Pages: 231
Back Blurb: Mislabeled boxes, problems with visiting nurses, confusing notes, an outing to the county fair - such are the obstacles in the way of the unnamed narrator of The End of the Story as she attempts to organize her memories of a love affair into a novel. With compassion, wit, and what appears to be candor, she seeks to determine what she actually knows about herself and her past, but we begin to suspect, along with her, that given the elusiveness of memory and understanding, any tale retrieved from the past must be fiction.
Ok, honestly, I just cannot comprehend why someone would think this was a book worth reading at all, nevermind one that you must read before you die...
I can't remember the last time it took me so long to finish such a short book, particularly one that wasn't non-fiction. Reading this was torturous...I would wade through a few pages, struggling to pay attention, to care at all, until I just couldn't deal with it anymore. Come back later, repeat. At times, I was reduced to skimming. I never skim books like that. If I'd been reading this for any other reason, I would have chucked the book well before I got through the first chapter. Really.
In fairness, some of it does have to do with genre/subject matter. It is, as you can tell from the blurb, largely a book about a love affair. Books focusing solely/primarily on romances are really not my thing. I enjoy a good sub-plot involving romance in other books, that as a component, but that as a focus? Generally no, not at all, very very far down my list of things to read, somewhere behind textbooks on subjects that are not in my area of academic interest, just....not my thing at ALL. So perhaps, for people who enjoy reading novels focusing primarily if not totally on a relationship, this wouldn't have been as terrible...
However, that was hardly the only reason I detested this book. For one thing, there is the narrative framing of it. About half of it, overall, is a story about the relationship/love affair that the narrator had. The other half, intermixed throughout, is the narrator writing about the process of trying to write a novel about the affair. Now, honestly, does reading about someone trying to write sound all that interesting? Probably not...and if the person in question is well...I can't even find the words to describe the narrator. An example:
But at other times, I am really confused and uncomfortable. For instance, I am trying to seperate out a few pages to add to the novel and I want to put them together in one box, but I'm not sure how to label the box. I would like to write on it MATERIALS READY TO BE USED, but if I do that it may bring me bad luck, because the material may not be "ready." I thought of adding parentheses, and writing MATERIAL (READY) TO BE USED, but the word "ready" was still too strong despite the parentheses. I though of throwing in a question mark but that immediately introduced more doubt than I could stand....
and it goes on like that, on and on and reading it made me want to rip my hair out because there's such a thing as WRITING TOO MUCH DETAIL ABOUT THE MINUTIAE OF YOUR NEUROTIC THOUGHTS and I JUST DON'T CARE and NOT INTERESTING AT ALL.
Also, in these parts, she references things going on in narrators life at time of writing the novel, issues with her new (boyfriend, husband, partner?) Vincent, his senile father, etc., except never clarifies who these people are or why we should care about them at all, and so we don't care about them and to have them randomly brought back in every so often is jarring.
The parts about the affair are not much better. I didn't sympathize with the character at all. She becomes involved with a younger man, acts selfishly and basically treats him like shit throughout the relationship (and even in the parts where she is reflecting on her past behaviors and admits they were selfish, it still doesn't seem like she really understands what was wrong with her actions...), acts surprised when he breaks up with her, and then mopes, acts obsessive and basically STALKS him for months....like constantly calls, follows him to his job, invites him to parties and gets bothered when he declines to go with her, etc. The kind of thing I personally would have tried to get a restraining order or something if an ex of mine actually did in real life. Except, the way it was written, this all wasn't amusing, didn't make me feel anything other than annoyed with the character and with the fact that I was still stuck reading this drivel.
Far too much description of....well, everything. There was just...SO much included that I didn't feel needed to be there/that I didn't care about at all...parts where narrator goes on a walk and describes every damn thing she sees for paragraphs on end and for no real purpose really, just to be 'literary' or whatever, and dunno, i've read lots of 'literary' books and while not always hugely interesting, nothing that I can remember rubbed me the wrong way the way this book did...
also, random things mentioned and then dropped...narrator describes herself not in so many words but basically an alcoholic/habitually abusing alcohol in the very beginning of the novel and then this is just...never mentioned again. Um, ok? I get the whole concept of unreliable narrator, and I have read books where that literary mechanism was used very impressively, but this...
Basically, I didn't care about any of the characters, or what happened to them, at no point was I interested in what was going to happen next, just read in hopes of finally finishing the book so I could chuck it in the nearest bin. I guess in a way this might be the female version of the dissatisfied middle aged white guy novels oft. referred to in this community...
I don't know. I personally would not recommend this to anyone, ever, as anything but possibly kindle if you have a fireplace, but on the other hand, given that this book has multiple glowing reviews cited on the back/inside pages by Booklist, the New Yorker, Newsday, etc., and given just...the intensity of which I loathed it...perhaps it was me. Perhaps someone else might actually get something from reading this. Who knows. Personally, I'm not touching another piece of writing by Lydia Davis with a ten foot pole if I can help it.
:/