Tournament of Books discussion

Space to discuss the 2025 TOB contender Colored Television by Danzy Senna.

I read this last weekend, I liked it, but didn’t enjoy reading it for the most part. Kind of that can’t avert your eyes from a train wreck thing, you know? I thought she did a good job with the marriage, and in depicting the hells of writing. It reminded me of both American Mermaid and The Guest in different ways.

I'm almost done and finding it a little meh. I'm also finding the theme of marriages across a lot of these books a bit tiresom.

Oh, I like the comparison to The Guest.

I listened to this on audio this summer and found it an entertaining read but not particularly memorable.

I guess I'm in the same place, "entertaining but not memorable" although I am enjoying it very much so I wonder why that isn't enough. I guess it feels like in some cases there are a lot of words spent on a small thing that could have been fit into far fewer pages. I'm audio booking it and sometimes I phase out while multitasking and it never seems that I need to urgently go back and discover what I missed, because the same thing is still happening.

Chrissy wrote: "Kind of that can’t avert your eyes from a train wreck thing, you know? ..."

A train wreck that just keeps going. A train wreck that you see coming from miles away, could easily prevent, but instead run towards.

Like Lark, I found it entertaining, but a week after I don't remember much other than the main character was an idiot.

Tristan wrote: "Chrissy wrote: "Kind of that can’t avert your eyes from a train wreck thing, you know? ..."

A train wreck that just keeps going. A train wreck that you see coming from miles away, could easily pre..."

HA! I LOLed at her being an idiot.

I liked this novel quite a bit. I think Senna nails the conflict that can arise between family life and challenging work. So many parts were painful to read, but I generally felt sympathy for just about all of the characters. They all seemed like real people to me.

I really liked this one. The tension in the marriage between what both partners wanted was well done and I liked how she would tease out an idea or issue and then return to it, amplifying and adding complexity each time.

Multicultural Mayberry is Altadena, isn't it?

I enjoyed this, but didn't love it. I think I'm worn down by this being the third book I've read from the tournament that features an author/writer as the main character. I wonder if I would have enjoyed it more if I'd read it before Liars and Someone Like Us.

I appreciate glimpses into authors' worlds, but sometimes it also feels like writers are sticking to close to "what they know."

I liked it tepidly. The prose zings along but the story relies on secrets being kept that don’t really make sense to be kept, secrets whose sole purpose seems to be to create false-feeling dramatic tension, and I don’t care for that plot device so much, as a reader, when I’m screaming why not just tell your husband the truth, etc

It kind of felt like Yellowface or The Guest - a new genre of Literary Fiction that seems to take most of its cues from The Office, encouraging you to cringe along with the characters.

Bretnie wrote: "I appreciate glimpses into authors' worlds, but sometimes it also feels like writers are sticking to close to 'what they know.'..."

I was talking about this very thing the other day with my better half. How there are some writers who can write anything and make it feel real, and there are some writers whose writing is a reflection of their own immediate concerns. Mavis Gallant happened to be the example she gave for the former, Sarah Manguso for the latter.

I say that like they are exclusive categories, but really, it is more of a spectrum from the imaginative to the confessional. (An axis which is orthogonal to literary quality; I'm absolutely not saying one is better than the other.)

In this tournament, maybe =Liars= and =Great Expectations= at one extreme and =The Book of Love= and =The Book Censor's Library= at the other extreme.

Lark wrote: "I liked it tepidly. The prose zings along but the story relies on secrets being kept that don’t really make sense to be kept, secrets whose sole purpose seems to be to create false-feeling dramatic tension..."

I liked the book more warmly, but I agree with you about the needless secrets plot (the "Three's Company" plot), and I did find that annoying here.

I could not with this book. The main protagonist was so unlikeable, and I could not stop hating her, I hated how she used all her friends' things in the house she's house-sitting, even clothing, and drank all their wine - I finally had to dnf the book.

Nadine in NY wrote: "I could not with this book. The main protagonist was so unlikeable, and I could not stop hating her, I hated how she used all her friends' things in the house she's house-sitting, even clothing, an..."

I finished the book and I agree that was a sticking point for me as well.

Nadine in NY wrote: "I hated how she used all her friends' things in the house she's house-sitting, even clothing, an..."

Right, but doesn't that set up a weird counterpoint with the central "crime" of the novel - the fact that the producer is using all of her things (well, her novel)?

I thought there were a lot of layers in the novel about how people form and break alliances - race, friendship, marriage, career, etc.

It's easy to see the producer as a bad guy and thus an isolated incident, but in fact, it turns out to be very easy to make one's relationships transactional, and then very easy to betray them for one's gain - the producer is only one of many people doing that in this novel.

So maybe we weren't meant to fully embrace our narrator....

I just finished this on a long plane ride. I did enjoy reading it. I did not dislike the main character and her husband. The double crossing from the producer was pretty easy to predict. It’s a book about capitalism and greed more than race to me. But I appreciate the education in mixed race people.

Bryn wrote: "I jdid not dislike the main character and her husband...."

I had this vague memory about reading some writer explaining that she didn't want to write likeable characters, she wanted to write interesting characters.

It turns out my memory is even vaguer than I thought. But after some sleuthing, I found the quote I was mis-remembering:

"And I’m just not really interested in creating sympathetic characters. I’m more interested in writing characters who feel real."

It's a related sentiment, but it's not the quite same sentiment. That said, I highly recommend the whole interview:

https://lithub.com/im-not-really-inte...

What do people think of the word "mulatto" being so prominent in the story? How did it affect your reading? Is it a reclamation? Something else? To my ear it didn't sound racist in this context, just a weird throwback to the days when 'octaroon' was a word people thought was useful, because people actually kept track of those things and judged people because of their heritage for generations as far back as great-grandparents...but it's clear that for the protagonist (and author) the word "mulatto"has potent meanings.

I’ve always felt that real people, as well as characters in books, get to self-describe in any way they wish. I have not infrequently described myself as a “mutt“ or a “Heinz-57“ who comes from a long line of sharecroppers on both my biological and adoptive family sides. It might be unthoughtful for someone else to describe me that way, but I think it is fine for me to do it, especially because it truly encapsulates my origins and my life experiences. As you say, Lark, Senna’s protagonist packs a lot of meaning into her self-description as “mulatto,“ and I think the novel would have been shallower without the use of the term.

I generally avoid attaching too much significance between an author’s own biography and the characteristics of the characters in their novels. But to the extent that one finds that to be of interest, Senna’s memoir “I Know Where You Slept Last Night“ makes clear that the term “mulatto“ has a lot of significance for her personally.