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Snapshots
The Mahoneys are the quintessential Irish Catholic family, living what might seem a perfect life in the affluent New Jersey suburbs. But behind closed doors, they struggle with alcoholism, sexual orientation, and mental illness—they love and hate one another, save one another, and break one another’s hearts. Snapshots is a portrait of the Mahoneys, which begins when Kate, Patty, Sean, and Nora, all grown, come home for Christmas to the family’s summer house on the Jersey Shore. William Norris’s innovative novel then works deftly backwards in time, telling the story of their past twenty-five years as a family, filling in the rich, deep hues of the Mahoneys' family bonds.
- GenresBook Club
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
March 9, 2014
Apparently the other reviewers of this book think Dan Brown is the height of good writing, because their complaints can be summed up as follows:
How dare someone write a book that goes backwards chronologically, focuses on slowly revealing characters rather than narrative, and by and large eschews plot?
But the writing is good, people. And it's okay to wonder how things got to where they are rather than just wondering where they're going. Also, a good character study is almost always better than mindless plot and cardboard characters.
End of rant.
How dare someone write a book that goes backwards chronologically, focuses on slowly revealing characters rather than narrative, and by and large eschews plot?
But the writing is good, people. And it's okay to wonder how things got to where they are rather than just wondering where they're going. Also, a good character study is almost always better than mindless plot and cardboard characters.
End of rant.
September 9, 2008
I read this as a writer, and I found I had some real issues with it. The fact that I felt compelled to read it this way is indicative of a problem in and of itself. Good writing is like good table-waiting -- you don't notice it at all.
Immediately I was perplexed. The style of the writing is like the title suggests, as if the narrator is looking at a snapshot. The narration is removed. Dialogue is infrequent, and compressed into paragraphs so that both/all speakers are within the same paragraph. This made me feel distant from all of the characters, though it was an interesting choice, from a literary perspective. I just don't think it worked.
Another interesting choice that didn't work (IMHO, if I need to say so): the omnicient point of view. It took me quite a while to figure out that the narrator was omnicient. Most of the time the narrator sticks to the POV of the character who the section focuses on, with few shifts. And when they happen, they're jarring. There are some pure omnicient sections (what I call sections are shifts from one person in the family to another, which seem like changes in POV, separated by line breaks), but they don't really work, either. They hold even less interest than the distant-sounding semi-close-third-person sections.
People don't seem to use the omnicient voice much, and I think it's a shame. I remember it fondly from my childhood, this sense that there was an authorial knowing that I could achieve by becoming an author. So I wasn't offended by the POV itself, just the seeming indecision between the omnicient and close (yet distant) third person. Within sections that were seemingly in close third, the author would very occasionally slip in another perpsective on the action, but it was too occasional to be convincing.
The final problem I had was the reverse time structure. While there was certainly character development in choosing to make each successive chapter correspond to an earlier time period, there was a real lack of narrative arc. OK, that's one of those bullshit literary terms that I usually cringe at, but it's true here. I wasn't following a story, I was unfolding the reasoning behind the story, which could have been its own arc, but simply wasn't. The story did get good and juicy toward the middle, when the kids were mostly teenagers and the father was philandering, but the resolutions were already in place, so it lacked some mystery. And by the time we were at the "end" of the story -- really the beginning -- the kids were too young to be remotely interesting, and the story just sagged.
It's a shame, too, because the themes of this book were spicy.
This is one of those stories (I assume it was a first novel, but I could be wrong) that would have been called by a kind reviewer "ambitious."
Immediately I was perplexed. The style of the writing is like the title suggests, as if the narrator is looking at a snapshot. The narration is removed. Dialogue is infrequent, and compressed into paragraphs so that both/all speakers are within the same paragraph. This made me feel distant from all of the characters, though it was an interesting choice, from a literary perspective. I just don't think it worked.
Another interesting choice that didn't work (IMHO, if I need to say so): the omnicient point of view. It took me quite a while to figure out that the narrator was omnicient. Most of the time the narrator sticks to the POV of the character who the section focuses on, with few shifts. And when they happen, they're jarring. There are some pure omnicient sections (what I call sections are shifts from one person in the family to another, which seem like changes in POV, separated by line breaks), but they don't really work, either. They hold even less interest than the distant-sounding semi-close-third-person sections.
People don't seem to use the omnicient voice much, and I think it's a shame. I remember it fondly from my childhood, this sense that there was an authorial knowing that I could achieve by becoming an author. So I wasn't offended by the POV itself, just the seeming indecision between the omnicient and close (yet distant) third person. Within sections that were seemingly in close third, the author would very occasionally slip in another perpsective on the action, but it was too occasional to be convincing.
The final problem I had was the reverse time structure. While there was certainly character development in choosing to make each successive chapter correspond to an earlier time period, there was a real lack of narrative arc. OK, that's one of those bullshit literary terms that I usually cringe at, but it's true here. I wasn't following a story, I was unfolding the reasoning behind the story, which could have been its own arc, but simply wasn't. The story did get good and juicy toward the middle, when the kids were mostly teenagers and the father was philandering, but the resolutions were already in place, so it lacked some mystery. And by the time we were at the "end" of the story -- really the beginning -- the kids were too young to be remotely interesting, and the story just sagged.
It's a shame, too, because the themes of this book were spicy.
This is one of those stories (I assume it was a first novel, but I could be wrong) that would have been called by a kind reviewer "ambitious."
July 4, 2018
It was okay. I started off with high hopes in the first chapter when the characters were adults, but became less interested reading about preteens and small children. I reminds me of something I would have read in a college fiction writing course--in that setting, I would have thought it was great and would have been impressed by the writer's creativity in structuring the novel. Outside of that setting, I'm less impressed. I love learning character's backstories, but this was too far back. I didn't learn enough about them as adult to warrant going so far back into their pasts.
July 30, 2019
2 1/2 stars...the book is missing a couple “current day” chapters. I was left wanting to know what happened during the holidays in the present day...what conversations will the grown children have with each other, with their parents, etc.
February 28, 2019
Couldn’t finish. Boring. Slow. No plot.
January 14, 2013
While it is meant, like any book, to be read forwards, I feel as though this book could be read backwards as well. The entire time I was reading through a year (a chapter) I kept thinking how the family would deal with things, but then I realized I already read that, I already know how they ended up. If you have a problem with reading through the past instead of towards the future, just start at the end of the book, with the last chapter, and work backwards. It reads just as well (I know because I've done it). The book requires you to look at what the family has been through, after already knowing where they are. Kind of like meeting someone for the first time in real life...you know them at that moment. In order to really understand who they are, you have to go through the past, like flipping through an old family album.
A quick read, and definitely worth it.
A quick read, and definitely worth it.
June 21, 2010
this story is told backwards which is kind of annoying, but lends itself to a good end....but then you go back and re-read the first chapter....This book was a random find, and I just randomly selected it and was surprised by how much I liked it. I've had it for a few years and haven't been moved to pick it out of the to read pile. It's a good summer book. Just a novel about love and family and how you never know how things are going to turn out. Some of it is uplifting and some depressing- kind of like life.
October 11, 2012
A story of a familiy of four children, told backwards through the past twenty-five years of their lives. On the outside they look like the all-American, upper class family, but of course there’s all sorts of problems underlying their lives. At first I thought I didn’t like knowing the “ending” first, but actually it turned out very well. Everything pieced together as you went back in time.
May 10, 2008
I picked this book based solely on the cover and I was sorry I did. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.
June 11, 2008
Very clever style
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May 6, 20123.5 stars
January 13, 2013
It had such promise... I didn't mind going back in time once but the whole book just goes backwards and I wanted to see the OUTCOME, not the past.
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August 28, 2013Read 11/02
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews