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The Lost Entwife
, February 21, 2014
(view all comments by The Lost Entwife)
Sometimes I pick up a book and, in spite of it and my best intentions, we don't click. I thought The Music Room was off to a running start when I began to read the story of a man who had just learned that his brother took his own life - I mean, that's a hard-hitting entrance to a story, right? Unfortunately (and this is not a morbid joke), everything went down from that high moment. I struggled with The Music Room , folks. This one slowed me down, big time, and honestly - for a while, it made me regret even trying to carve out time to read.
Still, I finished it. I finished it because I hadn't finished a book in a while and this one I was determined to get through. I was bullheaded and trudged through and, I will admit it, I had fond hopes that the story would redeem itself at the end. Now I'm writing this review about a month away from having finished the book and I'm sad to say that I'm really struggling to even remember the ending. That's how little of an impact this one had on me.
With all that said, let me talk a few specifics - both good and bad. The good was that beginning. I was immediately caught in the story and, as I mentioned earlier, had hopes that this would be the book to break me out of a reading funk. McFarland introduces his characters well and I was interested in them. It's the mystery that really didn't work for me. Rather than face up to the fact that his brother is dead, we are inundated with all sorts of information and characters showing up (I can think of one in particular) who really don't do anything for the actual story other than produce a flimsy excuse of trouble before vanishing without any sort of resolution. The combination of mystery and self-exploration ended up with a product that felt muddled and confusing and, rather than receive any sort of enlightened insight into the mind of a grieving man, I was frustrated and upset that I couldn't connect with the story.
I wish I could recommend The Music Room , but I think there are other books out there that deal with grief like this in a much more coherent way while still retaining beauty in the style of storytelling and character development. While I'm glad I finished this one, I'm pretty upset with myself that I wasted so much time on something that I would remember so little of, when all is said and done.
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