Leni Zumas's writing crackles. Her books are sharp, bleak, funny, and possibly dangerous. When her collection of short stories, Farewell Navigator,...
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Winthrop sounds like a child writing about an adult world she cannot yet fathom.
She begins the book describing Wilson, a central character, on his 42nd birthday, "He feels the same as he always has, all his life, same as he did as a kid stalking through the woods with a BB gun or a young man drunk at a keg party, and so sometimes he doesn't recognize the city business man he's become..."
Nobody at 42 with a marriage, a dependent child and a big job don't feels the way s/he always has. Life just shifts a person's mind, and Winthrop doesn't have any insight into how time and parenthood inexorably alter everyone without a personality disorder to stunt their development. Her forays into the minds of her adult characters are very naive imaginings.
She's bit off more than she can chew and should write about what she knows...which may not be much yet.
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December by Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop
LibbyBean, July 16, 2008
Winthrop sounds like a child writing about an adult world she cannot yet fathom.She begins the book describing Wilson, a central character, on his 42nd birthday, "He feels the same as he always has, all his life, same as he did as a kid stalking through the woods with a BB gun or a young man drunk at a keg party, and so sometimes he doesn't recognize the city business man he's become..."
Nobody at 42 with a marriage, a dependent child and a big job don't feels the way s/he always has. Life just shifts a person's mind, and Winthrop doesn't have any insight into how time and parenthood inexorably alter everyone without a personality disorder to stunt their development. Her forays into the minds of her adult characters are very naive imaginings.
She's bit off more than she can chew and should write about what she knows...which may not be much yet.
(39 of 85 readers found this comment helpful)