21 June 2011

The Raising, Laura Kasischke - A Rant


Please allow me to critique rant about this book.  Oh. My. Goodgrief!  

Bone #1: Writing Style.  She was all over the place.  I know this is a modern style that new authors are adopting, but it only works if you're going to place it all together at some point, which never happens here.  She jostles between two different time periods (one year apart, not enough to really tell the difference) while you try to understand what clues or insinuations she's leaving for you.  Well, don't bother.  They lead to nothing, you may have even made up any insinuations in your head because she certainly doesn't explain them at any point.

Bone #2: Lead-ins, outside figures.  Too many times to count during her back and forth writing did she bring in outside figures that she insinuated or outright told you had bigger plots and that would later become understood or would later become central to the main characters.  No.  They're what, just filler, I guess?  For instance, she brings up the littler brother often and insinuates that he has information regarding the relationship of their parents and why they divorce and comes back to it often with more clues only to never talk about it again after you've spent countless minutes trying to figure it out.  What was the point?!  

Bone #3 and the most important: Interminably long and intriguing story only to reveal NOTHING.  After 496 pages of chaos and trying to keep up with her bouncing around and all of these clues and insinuations, the damn woman ends the book with a frickin goose egg.  When it comes time to empty the pockets of secret knowledge, she refuses.  Not in a classy 'I'll leave it up to you to decide' way, but truly even the effing characters don't know what happened to them!  WTF?!  She ends the story 15 years in the future with the characters still without the answers they tried so desperately to find for however many chapters.  Just tooling around in life still wondering because they didn't have the guts to go through with their investigation.  She made every single one of them a toolbag.

So why all the words?  What new kind of writing style is this that leaves your readers wanting to strangle you?  Why BOTHER?!  Ugh.  What a waste.  So dang good for 490 pages, truly disturbing hypotheses are formed with all of the clues, then six pages of "Ha! Got you.  Bet you thought I had some really good plot on hand."

This is one review I read online by Renee C. Fountain from Book Fetish: "However, the answers aren’t so forthcoming. Midway through the book, the suspense peaks and is ripe for the reveal; unfortunately, things are dragged out for another 150 pages. By the time the story is summed up, patience has long expired and instead of a going out in a blaze of glory, The Raising seems to simply dissipate in a puff of smoke. "

1 comment:

Cindy said...

Think I'll skip that one. :)