Two More Books (or it’s cold out, let’s read!)
Colors Insulting to Nature by Cintra Wilson
This book is what you might get if you were to cross Chuck Palahniuk (think in the vain of Invisible Monsters), Gus Van Sant, and Kathy Acker…only on acid. The reader gets to watch Liza grow up under the wretched confines of her loud and untalented mother Peppy Normal (note the last name as ultimate proof of irony) as she pilfers the family’s fortune on no talent schemes. We watch Liza vying for talent and recognition, going punk, getting involved into the San Francisco punk and drag queen scenes, tripping on so much acid she thinks she’s Tinkerbell and endlessly trying more than anything to be famous. The text is also intermixed with Liza’s really trashy cultishly successful character writings for Venal de Minus, which is basically early smutty fan fiction.
I thought of it as a coming of age story for people who never came into their age.
The Path of Minor Planets by Andrew Sean Greer
I was really excited about reading another of Greer’s books after having finished The Confessions of Max Tivoli, which I reviewed here and finding it incredibly…well, actually all words I could use to describe it are the very sorts of words that make me retch a bit when I read them on most novel covers. Suffice it to say, it got to me in a way few books have.
The Path of Minor Planets is a much different sort of book, not only because the story line is greatly different and the perspective follows more characters but because it isn’t a book where you easily connect emotionally with a main protagonist, which was a real focus of The Confessions of Max Tivoli. Greer’s strength of following characters over long periods of time shows through as well as his sense of tragedy. Although, in The Path of Minor Planets, the tragedy is a relatively smaller incident of an unknown young boy accidentally falling and dying towards the beginning of the book. It’s an incident that the main characters come back to and ponder every twelve years when the initial comet that appeared that fateful night resurfaces but more than anything the book’s themes focus on love between intellectuals. You feel the struggle of all of the characters living inside a highly scientific framework with the desire to connect to eachother and share dramatic passion under a sky of stars.
Overall, unless you are a real fan of astronomy and have struggled with these issues yourself, I’d recommend reading The Confessions of Max Tivoli instead. Still, it’s always an interesting thing when an author shows ability to create a variety of works.
(now playing: Elbow: Cast of Thousands)