God, I have been a bad blogger lately. No reason – just lazy and procrastinatey. Anyways, let’s get back into the swing of things (hopefully) with a look at a book I read at least a month ago.

I had never heard of Joe Pernice before I picked up this book. Since he has a successful music career, I figured I would enjoy his work. The intersection of music and fiction fascinates me. Boy, was I wrong.

The title of the book best describes how I felt when I finished. The entire text could be described as lumbering. I never felt that any sense of structure or cohesive narrative ever emerged. If it had been a longer book, I would have considered bailing out midway through.

First of all, the jacket copy says the narrator’s life changes when he meets Marie, an eccentric neighbor. She enters the story briefly in the early pages, but doesn’t appear again until halfway through. If she has such an impact, she can’t be invisible for half the pages.

That’s because of my second problem – nothing really happens. He laments his failed marriage, which he walked out on during the honeymoon and recounts how he met and courted his wife. Besides that, he secretly takes care of his nephew for his estranged brother-in-law so his sister doesn’t get mad. Wafer-thin plt development.

And that leads to the third problem – which story am I reading? Pernice jumps back and forth to pre-marriage, courtship and current time with no way of alerting the reader. No chapter breaks, no graphic element, nothing. Just a new section with you realizing a paragraph in that he’s jumped back in time.

Add in the fact that the characters are loathsome, something I can overcome if the writing is good, and this was an utter dud. I have since heard Pernice’s music and happy to report that he does excel in that artistic endeavor so I hope he focuses on the tunes in the time ahead.