CBR VI Review #2: Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead

“This was truly advanced WASP: how to comfort a wronged wife and mother without acknowledging any misdeeds done or embarrassment caused by loved ones.” 

Man alive did I dislike this book. Sometimes some distance from reading a piece will dull my initial impressions, good or ill, but I still stand by exactly how much I disliked this one.

Seating Arrangements tells the story of some truly terrible people over three days at a New England island estate, preparing for a wedding.  Our principle protagonist is Winn Van Meter, one of the least sympathetic characters I've come across in recent years.  His eldest daughter, Daphne, is getting married to another well to do socialite, named Greyson (really? Greyson?).  While everything has been well planned by the bride's mother, Biddy, things still go awry, as wedding plans often do, even when the people involved aren't terrible.  

Among the sad plots going on in this, Daphne's sister, Livia, is mourning a breakup from the son of her father's greatest (and least deserving) rival; a ridiculous crush that Winn has on one of his daughter's bridesmaids; and God I don't even care enough to say more about these things in summary without ranting about them.

Some spoilers ahead, but if you actually find them shocking, or find that the book is good enough to warrant you caring about knowing what will happen, then maybe just stop here - this review is not for you.

Winn is terrible.  His feud with Mr Fenn (who's first name I cannot be bothered to look up) never actually turns into anything of substance.  The jumps into his past that I suspect were put there to make us care about him only made me hate him more.  He's disrespectful to his entire family.  And God, the sort of tryst with HIS DAUGHTER'S BRIDESMAID.  I cannot get over that, on either side of the relationship.  Agatha is a whore, start to finish, with nothing else going on, and it grosses me out so much to have them be a thing.  It never feels justified, not even enough for me to go "How can you do that to your wife.  I didn't want Biddy to get angry and throw things - I just wanted her to walk out for literally anything else in her life.  Winn is terrifically self involved, a first class narcissist with the self assurance of the nerdy looking but incredibly dumb kid who gets beat up at school every day.  He has everything and values nothing and I just wanted him to die when he fell of that damned roof.  He faces practically no consequences for his consistently bad behavior.

Livia, the other character we're supposed to give a damn about, isn't a great improvement.  She's fairly insufferable about her ideals, completely whiny and unaccepting of her breakup, and naive to a degree that I didn't think was possible.  She grows a bit by the end, which is why she does stand as an improvement, but I didn't really care more for her - just didn't actively hate her.

The only character with POV that I actually cared about was not part of the Van Meter family.  Dominique I found rounded, interesting, compassionate, and realistic.  Whenever we shifted to her I was pleased.  I would have happily boarded a plane with her back to Belgium and followed her story instead of this one.

I don't remember how this book ended up on my To Read list, probably Entertainment Weekly.  It's definitely worth skipping.  The prose is good - this is a writer who understands how to write well.  She just didn't have a story to tell that I cared about, nor characters to hold my interest.

CBR VI Review #1: The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman

“Facing up to the nightmare of the past is what gives you the power to build your future.” 

This is the most recent thing I've read, but I figured if I'm getting any of these reviews done, I should pick the pieces I felt the most passionate about.  And since this completes a trilogy I've reviewed previously in this blog, this seemed a decent place to start. NOTE: SPOILERS ABOUND FOR BOOKS 1 and 2.  I'll try to avoid them for this specific story. :-)

The Magician's Land picks up essentially where The Magician King left off.  Quentin is kicked out of Fillory, no longer a king and feeling very lonely and heartbroken.  Elliot and Janet are left running things, with Josh and Poppy by their sides.  Julia is MIA, somewhere on the Far Side of the World. Elliot and Janet's story in Fillory is entirely linear; they have issues to combat and journeys to take and they are all along a straight path to the end.  Quentin, however, employs Lev's favorite technique of bouncing around a bit until the latter half of the novel, letting us know how Quentin got along in a post-Fillory existence.  Essentially, the two tales boil down as follows (again, no spoilers) :

Filllory is suffering, and Janet and Elliot journey to discover not only how bad things are, but what they can do to combat what is happening.  That's about as much as I can say of their story without ruining it.

Quentin goes back to the begin and returns to Brakebills, the magic academy that introduced him to his future back in The Magicians. He is taken in as a professor, finally learning what his specialty is and meeting a very important new friend in Plum, a young female magician in her final year at the magical school.  His other story involves a heist that he and Plum are hired to take part in, and how the discoveries that arise from that heist set to change things.

I really enjoyed this book. It brought back a number of fantastic characters from the series, letting us see them all again before the close.  Quentin finally grew into the character I wanted all along.  If you read my previous reviews, a lot of my anger and disappointment at the second book sprung from my hatred of Quentin's inability to grow the fuck up.  His ejection from Fillory finally does the trick, and he matures into the man I wanted to see more of from the start.  If you want me to care about a character over multiple books, that person needs to grow and change in ways that continue to make them compelling.  Book 2 Quentin was still so very much Book 1 Quentin that it drove me crazy.  It was incredibly satisfying to finally see him grow up and become what I dreamed of for him.

We also replaced our Female Lead Role, previously occupied by Alice in Book 1 (LOVE) and Julia in Book 2 (HATE) with Plum, who I enjoyed.  She had her own drama without being made purely of drama, ala Julia, but also managed to never become a love interest for Quentin, ala Alice.  And her ties to the rest of the universe set up by the first two books are believable and interesting.

I also think Lev better employs his timeline jumps in this one.  When we had the jumping around to give all of Julia's backstory in 2, I got bored.  It didn't help that I hated Julia.  But in this, it fills in some story as we go in a way that felt much more natural, and not so much like alternating pages with an entirely different story.  Sometimes it takes some trial and error to make techniques work for you, and Grossman seems to have nailed it down better in this one.

In the end, this is an incredibly satisfying conclusion to the trilogy.  Technically there's open air left at the close that would allow for more, but it also wraps in a way where you don't need anything else.  In the past few years, I've read a lot of series that concluded in maddening ways.  I was justifiably nervous about the wrap up on this one, especially with how disappointed I was in the middle volume.  I shouldn't have doubted - it all came out well in the end.  

A short bonus post update

So, you may have noticed a complete lack of reviews in the past year.  I've read 32 books as part of my half cannon commitment to CBR VI, but then failed to review a single one of them.  This makes me sad.

As such, I'm going to attempt to review at least a handful of them here before the year ends, and with it, my chance to contribute to CBR VI.  Then, starting the first of the year, we'll see if I can't do better with CBR VII.

For any random people who actually read this blog, which I imagine is only other Cannonballers, but whatever - please go visit Cannonball Read and see all the magnificent reviews posted by people who were much better at this whole thing this year than I was.  And buy books through the links included on the reviews if you are interested in buying those books - they donate a portion of the sale to our charity when you do!