this book i'm reading

a friend from work invited me to join her book club, so i did. after a couple false starts, i was able to read the book and join the discussion in february. so it's march and we're reading another book and it's got some flaws. 

first of all, it's as if the author believes that L and M are the main two letters names can begin with. libby, lucy, michael, marco, mémé plus then there's a henry jr and henry sr. then she alternately gets fantasticly creative with birdie, phineas, clemency, stella. obviously she has an imagination. i'm telling you, though -- unless libby and lucy turn out to be somehow the same person, it's simply poor form. you're confusing your readers and demonstrating your lack of creativity. 

secondly, the way she's unfolding the mystery is less intriguing than frustrating. it's even like a mystery is unfolding, but more like it's being withheld and parcelled out -- like she doesn't quite have enough mystery to make it to the end, so she's got to be careful how much she gives out. so, it's not a natural development, it's an artificial construct. 

on top of all that, it seems a bit trite. i'm maybe 1/3 of the way in, and what we have so far is a well-to-do british family where the mom has some sort of mental breakdown, invites in some odd/dangerous boarders into the house, and things go downhill from there, culminating in suicides. 

the mystery is, what happened that led up to the suicides. 25 years later, the surviving baby is 25 and, unaware of her origins, inherits the house. the surviving teenagers are (1) narrating in the past tense and (2) destitute in the present. none of them seem to have awareness of the others in any meaningful way. 

so... it's confusing, slow, disjointed, and mechanical. now, in its defense, i have learned some new terms: wolf tone, wooden harboring, and chinese burn. the latter is what we in the states would call an indian burn, altho neither term is politically correct. 

i'll try to remember to let you know how it turns out.