This novel garnered terrific reviews and was selected for at least one prestigious prize (the National Book Foundation’s “5 under 35”). I had high hopes. However, I have to agree with a comment made earlier on this site – the novel reads more like practice at writing a novel than a novel itself. The premise is interesting enough: a series of unnamed first-person narrators respond to a political coup of some sort in some unnamed country. But since the characters don’t quite manage to come alive, nor are they meaningfully differentiated from each other, the premise morphs into an uncomfortably forced conceit. Still, the novel is an interesting read and, at 183 pages, a speedy one. Occasionally the language shines but more often, some of the best ideas and images repeat themselves, as though the reader isn’t quite to be trusted. For example, the chef is particularly fond of serving abalone to his various masters. His process for killing an abalone, when first described, is chillingly revealing:“As soon as I arrived, I would place the live abalone on the floor of the pantry. They were always tense from being transported and had to calm down before I could kill them, otherwise the flesh would be tough. I would leave them there until everything else was almost ready, then creep up on them and hit them on their soft underbellies with the end of a rolling pin. If they sensed me coming they contracted like a heart muscle and were wasted.”However, the abalone death scene repeats itself several times, which saps its power considerably. In all, I’ll be interested to read the author’s next endeavor. She plays with a lot of good ideas in this novel, but despite its neat ending, so tidily wrapped up, the ideas don’t quite gel. Perhaps next time they will.
this is a totally good first novel. i was excited to read this because ceridwen lived in currier and i had no idea she was writing until i saw her in some web video about new books, i forget the name of the series. plot is basically: dictator overthrown by new regime, as told from the perspectives of the dictator's portraitist, chef, and barber. the chapters are short, and the changing first-person accounts make _as i lay dying_ the obvious sounds-like, to say nothing of how brutal and unsympathetic the women are in part 2. you can kinda see where ceridwen's taking the thing about halfway through (the new regime turns out to be just as violent a dictatorship, etc.), so the subplots take on added significance, and she kills the subplots, particularly the portraitist/portraitist's wife, etc.ok so sidenote, and if you like what you see, i'm at 2234 pine way in aurora illinois: why are all the men made out to be borderline sociopaths? e.g. why does the portraitist smell his wife's urine? no more/less stable man, no matter how much he digs a chick, would ever stick his head up to a toilet bowl to get a whiff of her wizzy. we are not dogs!! this almost reminds me of the dealbreaker of an interlude in that joshua ferris book, when he's writing about the female boss who has cancer and a bad lovelife. she felt bad! so she went shopping! but there was nothing there for her to buy! so she ordered chinese food!double sidenote, relevant only because coetzee blurbed ceridwen's book: which male writers, besides coetzee, write awesome and convincing and definitively "female" female characters?
What do You think about Blood Kin (2008)?
The reading challenge I'm taking on. Join me!This book fulfills the challenge: A book by a female author.Actual Rating: 1.5 StarsOh yay, two of my favorite things- adultery and heavily implied, if not explicit, incest. (That was sarcasm, if you couldn't tell.) I'm gonna be honest, this review is based totally off my own preferences and next to none objective crit, and I apologize ahead of time for that.Anyway, this book does have one thing going for it: the writing. It's descriptive and beautiful. It's also easy to follow; hence why the rating is 1.5 instead of a flat out 1.But the characters and story itself are ehhh. The 3 main characters are obsessed with their jobs. And I mean completely obsessed to point that it gets kinda creepy. Like the barber takes his hair clippings and collects them in jars kind of creepy. Not to mention that all the characters are incredibly flawed, if not downright irredeemable. I found it very difficult to sympathize with any of the people we meet in this novel. Not to mention most of the action is in the last 20 pages. Most of the novel is just our three main characters sitting in a room in a house turned headquarters for the recent coup and reflecting on their lives before.Beautiful writing, but I hated the story so much.
—Rachel
Dovey writes this short novel without resorting to a single name for a character, and so the chapters are told from the perspective of the "President's Chef". or "President's Chef's Daughter" or even farther. This anonymity starts out meaningful, but as the reader gets more confused in translating who the "President's Barber's Brother's Fiancee" is again (oh yes, really) it starts to seem gimmicky.The narrative is fluid and almost musical. The fatal flaw to the book, and maybe its train-wreck-quick ending, is that her fine character development led to unlikeable, unrespectable characters down to the last. There is no protagonist, no central character nor any likeable character to root for, so boredom and a dislike for 100% distopian novels nearly made me give up on this one. However, her themes of love, loyalty justice are well-developed, and the plot seems believable (except for the part where the Chef's wife is the Secretary of the Treasury??!? invented and thrown away, as quickly as it was inserted...) for a fictitious small country. Two and a half stars. Could have been three and a half if she finished the book.
—Tracy St Claire
I really didn't like the story much since it was pretty negative theme to it. I did like how it was written. The story is about a coup that takes place and the current President is over thrown. The story is from the perspective of "His Barber", "His Portraitist" and "His Chef", later on it switches to "His Portratist Wife", "His Chef's Daughter"...etc than back again. It was just a really interesting way to write the story I think. Now as far as the story itself. The characters seem to be little storms of chaos on their own and bringing them all together seems to make for a pretty crazy story. Just felt kind of icky after reading it, surprise twist in it etc... Some might really like it, but I thought it was just ok, and that's not even for the story.
—Sharolyn
