I enjoy when a book goes from "Aw, this is a fuckin' gingersnap" to "Touch me again and I'll cut you" in a matter of a few lines. I think what I liked most about this book was the fact that it was so dedicated to the banalities of every day life.

491
Maybe it's me. ( )

Before I get going, it's worth pointing out that I read this almost entirely because a friend of mine, who is a writer, was very influenced by this book. Left to my own devices, I likely wouldn't have picked it up. So be aware that I'm not Robison's audience.

That said, I'm concerned that there are very serious things wrong with me, and that this book brought them all out.

I don't care very much about 'consistent characters' or verisimilitude or realism or whatever. That said, this book seems to be reaching for verisimilitude at least, and I'm more than a little confused about the main character, who was married to a Latin Professor, has read Melville's 'Pierre,' and often makes off-the-cuff references to John Ashbery, but apparently does not know what the word 'tort' means.

ii) That doesn't matter at all, provided you get something else from the book, and I should be able to get something from this, since our narrator is very flippant and I like flippancy. But I'm not sure what I was meant to get out of this: there's a woman. She's writing a script for Hollywood big-wigs (this is clearly meant to be satire). She's got a new boyfriend who is rich and a moron. She's trying to deal with the fact that her son has been raped and tortured, and the criminal is coming up for trial. Also, her daughter is overcoming heroin addiction. But I don't care about any of these things, and I suspect many readers will feel the same way. All of the events are reported in the same voice, whether it's someone looking up the word 'tort' or the horrific assault.

iii) There's a nice level of reflexivity early on: our narrator has painted a fake Rothko. Her friend complains that there's no "focal point. Something for our eyes to fix on, finally, and rest upon. Something we end up gazing at." The narrator responds, "It's! A! Copy!" Of course, the same can be said about this book; it lacks a focal point, lacks anything for us to fix on, finally. The implication here is that we shouldn't look for that one thing to fix on, finally. That's a good point.

So this book gives me at least two of the things I really value in fiction, but also makes me complain about things I don't really care about. That's an odd mix.

So, the content being more or less boring, the most important aspect of the book is its fragmentary form (the part of the book that has most influenced my friend). And it is nicely done, and a nice way to stick to garden variety realism while avoiding some of that mode's worst flaws (most obviously, Robison doesn't need to join everything together, so the book is compact and engaging). On the other hand, the brevity of the fragments forces the author to restrict herself, I fear, for the worse. There's not all that much that can be said in half a dozen lines to one page, and although there are few dud fragments here, there's also very little that sticks in my mind. A lot of people are writing like this now. The form is in a pretty obviously dialectical relationship, the other tendency being very, very long sentences, an absence of paragraph or chapter breaks, and, at the most extreme, books comprising only one sentence (Vanessa Place; Laszlo Krasznahorkai). We can all learn from both forms; the best books of the next generation will, I hope, take the best of the minimalist, fragmentary approach and the best of the maximalist. ( )

This is not the type of book I normally love. I'm drawn to and most profoundly affected by traditional storytelling--great big baggy monsters of stories, books that include more rather than less of everything--so Robison's fractured, experimental collection of vignettes from the mind of the severely ADD (and ridiculously named, alas) Money. My usual dissatisfaction with short work must have been at a wane because I did like this book enormously.

For one thing, it's a gorgeously written book: there are so many downright beautiful lines and observations that I may well purchase a copy if I ever run across one in the stores. I adored the numerous small, mysterious adventures and interactions; my favourite parts had to do with a frequently missing cat and the (quite capable of hearing) neighbor Deaf Lady, with whom Money has a number of touching and very funny interactions. There's a lot, plot and theme wise, that's accomplished here with very little, but what stood out most to me as one of the book's triumphs was the tone. The plot, as it emerges, is one that could be intolerably angsty in another author's hands or with longer treatment: Money is somewhat crazy, ADD-hyper and permanently high on ritalin, and her two children are both deeply troubled. Wonderfully, the fragmented form does not allow for drama or pity-seeking. Overall, "Why Did I Ever" is funny, breathless, unapologetic, and unsentimental. Because it never stoops to cheap emotional shots it's also deeply tragic and emotionally affecting when it does pause to directly (or offhandedly) address the more troubled aspects of the plot. An example of an unconventional form benefiting its contents to the maximum--highly recommended. ( )

Meh. ( )

This was novel, what, #6 for 2007? That's quite a record for me, and luckily I've yet to be disappointed. For a work that was decidedly not linear, I never found myself lost. It was like the 500 sections were puzzle pieces, detailed enough so that you could see the whole picture without having to put those pieces together. ( )