MADreads

Tumbling through

October 29th, 2007 Lisa - Central

Don’t you hate it when a book doesn’t really live up to its beginning?  When I began reading The Brambles by Eliza Minot, I fell in love with her writing style and her characters.  I enjoyed how once in a while she takes a pause in her plot to focus on a character’s thoughts or the minutiae of a mother’s day or where the brain goes on a long drive.  It was enjoyable to tumble around in those passages. 

The main characters are grown siblings living in Manhattan and suburban New Jersey: Margaret, happily married with 3 kids; Max, married with a son, who just quit his film production job and keeps the news from his wife; and Edie, a not-so-happy, single 20-something, struggling with an eating disorder.  They are newly faced with the imminent arrival of their father who is dying of cancer.  Widowed when his wife died in a small plane crash, he was living in California, and could no longer care for himself.

Minot shows the family member’s interactions with each other amidst this life change, and their relationships ring very true.  She also really captures the self-involvement of the trio, each one so focused on their own inner world that two of them end up missing their father’s death. 

What annoyed me about the book was a few too many coincidences and the too frantic pace of Margaret’s young family.  I know dealing 3 little kids must be nuts, but reading about it in every scene got on my nerves.  What happens over a few seconds in life seems to take forever on the written page.

Still, I’m not un-recommending this book.  I liked the three siblings and their relationships and Minot’s writing is fresh and lightly humorous.  Plus, there’s a very interesting twist at the end.

Entry Filed under: Literary Fiction, Recreational Fiction