English language
Published June 21, 2010 by Harper.
"A novel about a crumbling marriage resurrected in the face of illness, and a family's struggle to come to terms with disease, dying, and the cost of medical care in modern America"--Provided by publisher.
Gross, tragic, over-the-top, and yet ultimately very boring. The characters feel like incomplete, less-interesting versions of the ones from Kevin. They're flat, unlikable, and not nearly as complex.
I didn't earn the right to claim that this book is horrible. I did earn the right to say that the first third is, though. I can't go on.
Except for Shep, the characters in this novel are loathsome, nasty people. Glynis, Shep's wife and cancer patient, is weaponized, revealing her disease to friends and family in the ways that will hurt them the deepest. And reveling in the pain she causes. I can only believe that the author is deliberately challenging my compassion; can I bring to the surface sympathy for a miserable person being attacked by a miserable disease (and it is really awful and painfully detailed) or will I root for the cancer? I think I'll take a middle ground on it: I don't want this cancer to kill her or cause any further suffering. I just don't want this character (or her friends) in my life. …
I didn't earn the right to claim that this book is horrible. I did earn the right to say that the first third is, though. I can't go on.
Except for Shep, the characters in this novel are loathsome, nasty people. Glynis, Shep's wife and cancer patient, is weaponized, revealing her disease to friends and family in the ways that will hurt them the deepest. And reveling in the pain she causes. I can only believe that the author is deliberately challenging my compassion; can I bring to the surface sympathy for a miserable person being attacked by a miserable disease (and it is really awful and painfully detailed) or will I root for the cancer? I think I'll take a middle ground on it: I don't want this cancer to kill her or cause any further suffering. I just don't want this character (or her friends) in my life.
And one more negative: the diatribes uttered by each character and the narrator could have been supplied by lobbyists as paid placement. And, just in case you don't pick up on the point the first time, the arguments will be repeated several times so that you get it. This is not interesting or challenging literature. It's pamphleteering. Shriver, the point here can be delivered in about a paragraph and none of your readers are so intellectually challenged to need it repeated several times at great length. It's almost as bad as an Ayn Rand novel.
There are reviews on Good Reads that say the last 60 pages offer some redemption for this novel. I'm not going to waste any more time to get to that point when there are so many good books to read.
And for the Tournament of Books 2011, if the winner gets a rooster, this book should get a turkey.
The first half of So Much For That was incredibly difficult to get through. It felt like there were too many lectures, and too little characterization. The second half moved at a much better clip, but unfortunately this book felt too much like "American Health Insurance for Dummies." Jackson, for the first half of the book, seemed to exist solely as a mouthpiece for the author. Shep and Glynis, who were the heart of the story, seemed murky and distant, much like a picture from a pinhole camera. The prose is wonderful in much of the book, but it is too flawed to recommend.
