Jarred Marlatt

I’m still reading this now, and I’m only giving a star rating because it forces me to, but I’ll update it when I’m finished. Something I can’t decide yet, by the end of Act II Chapter 3, is if the 8-year old child Nat is meant to have the mental and social skills of a five-year-old or if she is just somewhat poorly-written? I can’t make sense of this aspect of her but it’s hard to ignore. Her inner monologue reads like something little more advanced than what I imagine goes on in my toddler’s head. Any help here? It’s taking me out of the reading and making it hard for me to suspend my disbelief.

I guess there was no specific thing about this book that stuck out to me as poor or unreadable; that said, I would almost certainly have stopped reading it 100 pages in if not for the accolades it had already received, so I kept reading in order to understand what I was missing. In the end, I still don’t know what is so popular about this book. It does nothing remarkable or new, and the unoriginal things it does are not done remarkably well. The latter two sections are much, much better than the former, and do much to justify them. It’s not that I don’t get what Diaz is attempting, it’s just that I don’t get the hype for it. It is a fine book - a B+/A- level book - and I just have resigned myself to remain baffled as to why so many people whose opinions I value value it so highly. There are plenty of books about or told by unlikeable people; plenty of books about or told by unreliable narrators that focus on the nature of truth; plenty of books with unexpected twists that shift perspective and cause the reader to question their preconceptions; plenty of books about the obscenely wealthy. I recommend reading some of the best versions of those types of books if that’s what you’re in the mood for; this book good, but it is not one of the best.