Seattlest: Seattlest Book Club: Red Weather

James

Tue, 15 May 2007 16:45:46 -0800

Somebody wasn't an English major...

Seth

Tue, 15 May 2007 15:24:34 -0800

I find this all extremely tedious. In a 200 page novel, there are going to be some moments that just don't work. Duh. If you stuck around till page 144, the author is obviously doing something right.

Audrey

Tue, 15 May 2007 12:48:54 -0800

Silvie enjoys hating things, for some reason.

Jack

Tue, 15 May 2007 12:25:43 -0800

I got a late start and am only on page 70, but I agree, to a point, with much of what's been said already. There are definitely moments of overzealous and unnecessary description and places where the teenage/man-in-his-30s reflective device is awkward, but I think I'm much more forgiving about it. Chalk it up to first-novel mistakes, I say. As for what MVB said about Yuri's portrayal of home-life and his relationship with his parents, I completely agree. This has been the most satisfying aspect to the story for me. Aside from the occasional narrative drifting off course, Toutonghi does a great job capturing the self-centered teenager just trying to get through the day without too many disasters. Also, the father's dialogue is hilarious -- well crafted on Toutonghi's part. "...Finland would buy pigs from us... Sexy pigs, only. We would send sexy Latvian pigs to Finland to mate with the Finnish girl pigs."

MvB

Tue, 15 May 2007 10:31:23 -0800

This is interesting. I find myself entertaining James's "pudding" metaphor, while also agreeing with Matt that the narrator's voice just isn't solidly here (30-something) or there (teen-aged). In fact, the reason I say "entertain" is because while pudding does set, no one who has ever watched it do so (to my knowledge) has declared it a fascinating experience to watch. For me, the book never decides whether it's a fictional memoir (which can include the things that read like journal excerpts, so long as they're spiced with reflection) or a more plot-driven narrative about immigrant father/native son conflict. A memoir can take you down all sorts of roads that don't pay off, necessarily -- you just go for the trip and maybe some lessons learned. But plot deals with actions and consequences, and ruminations on the taste of Count Chocula need a reason for inclusion. I wouldn't call the life passages James lists narrative cliches as such; it's really the formulation of them that would be cliche (or not). Here, while Toutonghi sets them up with nice attention to the particulars, that incuriosity that Matt mentions derails how they play out. Luckily, there's always a new event that comes along, but you know, this is not a rigorous Proustian examination of adolescence. To me, the single most successful piece was Yuri's portrayal of home life and his retelling of his relationship with his father as a way of getting a new look at the man who raised him--and maybe finding a way out of his shadow.

James

Tue, 15 May 2007 10:06:02 -0800

(I'll state again that the factual errors, whatever their origin, don't bother me in this context -- it's a first-person novel, not a history book.)

James

Tue, 15 May 2007 09:55:17 -0800

I guess it seemed obvious to me that the 30-ish Yuri is getting into the head of his 15-year-old self, sometimes for ironic effect. Your example about his mother's being lonely "for some reason" is a case in point -- it's obvious to anyone who isn't a 15-year-old Yuri why his mother's sad. That includes the 30-year-old Yuri. The "for some reason," I think, is intended to convey how self-absorbed his adolescent self was, not that he doesn't get it now. On the other hand, the factual errors that we mentioned last week don't work for me in the same way. They're not obvious or enlightening enough to feel deliberate -- that was a thought that had occurred to me, but there didn't seem to be a payoff. I sense that you're not seeing much payoff even with the ironic distance.