Play Book Tag discussion

This is a book where not too much happens, but the characterization is off the charts. Everyone in this book is a bit (or a lot) of a mess, and yet, you can't help but love most of them. I was particularly into Cleo and Zoe and their relationship, although I liked quite a few of the other characters as well. I do think the blurb on the back of the book was a bit misleading, since a bunch of the problems that all the characters had I think would have happened whether or not Frank and Cleo had gotten married. Regardless, it was still interesting to follow everyone's stories and see how fucked up everyone gets. I think I have a thing for fucked up characters, even when they become frustrating, because that's when it also gets interesting.

tl;dr Cleo and Frank meet and get married a few months later; Frank is a 40-something year old advertising agency bigshot and Cleo is a British painter in her 20s. The book follows the failure of their marriage over the year, explores the reasons for that failure, and touches on the people around them and their lives, all set in New York. I loved the setting because the author talked about places in great detail that I'd been to, so I could really imagine it in my mind's eye (particularly the part that was set at Grand Central Station). A lot of the book is set in areas that aren't really my scene (like clubs and parties and such), but there's definitely a very New York feel to everything. I feel like the city itself was another character, or this book was a love letter to the city.

I particularly enjoyed the messy family stuff going on with both Cleo and Frank. We get scenes particularly with Cleo's family and you start to see why she's so fucked up, and I always enjoy thinking about how parents can fuck kids up without meaning to. So many people in this book have some sort of mental illness (by the way, tw for suicide attempt, depression, substance abuse, cheating, body dysmorphia, animal death, and so much more), and it's sort of a depressing way of looking at the world and the people in the world, but also an interesting exploration of the way that the people around us can affect our mental health and vice versa.

In addition to mental health, the book is a thorough treatise of love (both friendship and romantic), art, and desire. When is what we desire bad for us? What is real art? How do we create art from pain? And so on and so forth. Perhaps I'm making it sound a bit pretentious, but I still loved it.

(I have to say though, the part about the guy buying up buildings on Randall's Island to make skyrises or whatever made me laugh because I work on that island, and it stinks every afternoon because of the waste water processing plant there, so I doubt people are going to be running to live there - not to mention the forensic and psychiatric hospital that are also on the island.)

A lot of people seemed to not like this book because either 1) nothing much happened and 2) the characters were unsympathetic. But I feel like this is the kind of book that is almost only a character exploration, so I didn't go into it thinking that it would have the type of plot I might find in say a fantasy or murder mystery. And I also knew pretty quickly the characters would be unsympathetic, but there were still hints of them that I could love and care about; the author still made me want to root for them even when I was frustrated at their choices. I also think I'm particularly attuned to the psychology of characters, so this sort of book is perfect for me.

So if you like character exploration, thinking about the psychology of a bunch of fucked up people, and the exploration of love, art, and mental illness, you should check this one out!