Being the goal-oriented person that I am, I couldn’t possibly usher in 2011 without setting some kind of goal for reading. Last year I read 47 books, so for 2011, I set the oh-so-unique goal of reading a book a week. So far, as of January 22, I’ve finished 7 books. Not bad…although I’ll admit to padding my reading list with some shorter books to build in a cushion for some longer books that I plan to attack this year, including an epic biography of the Queen Mother that my Mom gave me for Christmas.
One of the books that I read towards my 2011 goal is “A Changed Man” by Francine Prose. I’ve had this book for quite some time; it’s been languishing on my bookshelf. The premise sounded good; a neo-Nazi attempts to change his life and keep other like-minded neo-Nazi types from becoming just like him. I like a good redemption story, so I was excited to cross this book off of my “to-read” list.
Boy, did this book blow. The characters were poorly developed, and so painfully self-aware. Do most people really spend that amount of time on self-reflection? If they do I am in SO much trouble, because I very rarely have such moments of self-realization. My epiphanies tend to be few and far between. These mo-fo’s seem to have them several times a day. Ah, to be so enlightened…
I get the basic message of the book. People can change, even people on the extreme ends of the spectrum. It’s a nice thought, and could have been a pretty awesome book, but the author just didn’t capture it. Her characters were overly contrived and rather clichéd. The neo-Nazi has lots of tattoos. The divorcee was frumpy and frazzled. The Holocaust survivor spends his life making good and saving the down-trodden.
I know that this comment sounds SO pretentious, but in this case it’s true. The book was very poorly edited. The author went off on tangents, leaving the reader confused. I’m no dummy, but there were several times I had to go back and re-read paragraphs because I lost the author’s train of thought. At times I felt like I was reading a book written by someone with ADD; the thought patterns followed no discernible logic.
With 50 pages to go, I no longer gave a shit what happened to these characters. Because I felt like I couldn’t count this book towards my 52 book total until I got to the bitter end, I finished it. Barely. I’ll admit that I skimmed the end, and even that took a good amount of effort. This book will definitely be in the box when I make my next trip to Goodwill. I’d rate this book a big, fat “skip it”.
PS – don’t you kind of think that every good book review should include the term “mo-fo”?
