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Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner
Yet another book ‘review’. I don’t know whether I can rightfully call them reviews when I’m really just giving my opinion about how I liked the book in terms of what I like. I mean, it isn’t as if I’m reviewing it and saying with some kind of authority whether it is a good book or a complete flop. Anyway, on to what I thought about it.
I’ve previously read two of her other novels, and have the newest novel sitting right here, just begging to be opened. The best I can say about the others is that I enjoyed them enough to read them straight through and finish them. There are other books to which I cannot be so kind. It isn’t as if I didn’t like them – on the contrary. I’ve ready them both more than once. On the other hand, they didn’t leave me wanting to rave about the books from rooftops.
This one was different, though. I had a bit of a hard time getting into it, a fact which I owe to starting it while I was working at Comcast and rarely able to read more than three or four pages at a time before I would have to put it down to take a phone call. (I know, I know. It sucks to be me, having to actually do my job.) At any rate, I picked it up again recently and really haven’t been able to put it down since. The main character has a kind of appeal to her that most other characters in books I’ve read don’t have, so she appeals to me in a kind of different way. She has none of the confidence and social togetherness that the other heroines have, and in that way, I guess I can identify with her more as I am rather than as I would like to be. She is an excellent if struggling mother, an intelligent woman and an all-around caring person who just doesn’t quite seem to have it all together.
What surprised me most about this book was how much into the murder mystery storyline I found myself diving. Usually I’m content to “watch” on the outside, with only vague curiosity in ‘whodunnit’. I was right there with Kate the whole way, trying to find out who was the killer and what had happened to cause the situation. I was really quite taken in by this book. It is a definite keeper for me; I’ll probably read it again. My only complaint about it was the way the story skipped around. Sometimes I like a little shifting in time – not telling the story in order, but this didn’t seem to work out for me. It wasn’t well-timed flash-backs, it was simply flash-backs interspersed with current story so that nothing seemed to come together at all – not even in a vague way – until halfway through the book. Still, I really enjoyed reading it, even if the ending wasn’t as clear-cut about what happened as I would like. Life doesn’t end up with clean endings, though, so I guess I should stop hoping my books will.
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