I'm going to get the conversation rolling before we fall too far behind.
What did you think of "Florida"? I had mixed feelings about it. I enjoyed Christine Schutt's writing style and was captivated by the early part of the narrative but became less intrigued as the main character aged and became reacquainted with her mother. I'm not sure I understood her trajectory into adulthood, exactly. Any insights?
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I had the same feeling about it. The character's childhood was really compelling, but her adulthood was so thoroughly bleak. And I didn't feel I was ever able to really connect with the character or understand her motivations.
ReplyDeleteFor me, it was emotionally draining. I saw this little girl, pummeled by her family's abusive relationships, then repeat the same mistakes without seeming to want or try for anything different.
ReplyDeleteOne sentence that stuck with me was in the section "West Seventy-Six": "A second spring passed before he died, the terrible Walter, still in the phonebook, at my address."
That sentence struck me, too, Shanxi! Are we supposed to think of her as something of a masochist, or at least as someone who gravitates, whether by nature or nurture, toward dysfunction, who feels most comfortable when things are all screwed up?
ReplyDeleteAlso, did you understand the mother to be truly mentally ill or just "different"? I was kind of moved by the section of the book where the narrator is talking about how she was glad to live apart from her mother. I did not want to be different. Then on the next page there's this really beautifully written — so vivid! — paragraph about her mother:
Mother, using her teeth to open the aspirin, drinking water from the toothbrush glass, swallowing — close, fleshy, human — said, "I didn't want to be different either. I just was."
I wondered, too, what exactly the mother's mental state was. We weren't given much evidence of a debilitating mental illness, but that could've been because we were seeing it through the eyes of a child who didn't know any other life.
ReplyDeleteThat was very much my reaction too. I never felt like I had much insight into her and was, instead, just watching her. She became less watchable later on.
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