I have no idea how Elizabeth Tallent's
Museum Pieces wound up on my unread-book shelf. Even after reading it, I still have no idea. I do, however, feel capable of "translating" the blurb that appears on the cover of the paperback edition.
…writing with a keen, quicksilver appreciation of her characters' inner lives (Translation: She has to concentrate on their inner lives; they never do anything interesting in the novel. All it does is trace their feeling about what happened previously.) and with a poet's eye for the luminous, skewed details of daily life, (Translation: Expect page after page of tedious description.) Miss Talent has created a lyrical, resonant novel …(Translation: Yep, it's boring.)
I did, however, read all the way through it. There are some dog-eared pages, so amidst all those words, I must have found at least a few things interesting.
1) A female character was involved with a younger man. "… he claimed that meeting her changed his life. She didn't know how to explain that she liked his life the way it was, that she didn't want it changed by her—she couldn't shoulder such a responsibility." (page 97) A nice expression of disinterest in involvement, IMHO.
2) Something to think about: "Greta Garbo once said, 'I want to be alone.' Mia [a female character] doesn't believe it. How can anyone imagine they love being alone? Probably you can feel that if you are constantly sought after." (page 165) Interesting, but I'm pretty sure I disagree.
3) Huh? Mia is driving home with a man with whom she would like to spend the night. "She is a little awed with herself, that she wants to. The coffee is a faint bitter taste in the back of her throat." (page 170) When two sentences are that disconnected, is it still "good writing"? Yes, the two characters had had coffee, but they'd done so in the previous scene. Just wondering.
4) The author did make me grin—once. "He nibbled at the tendons of her throat; he was trying to give her a hickey. She told Tara it was like being eaten by Pac-Man." (page 177)
Several semi-unfamiliar words in this one:
1) "He probably looked real scrabous." (page 4)
www.dictionary.com has no listing but lists "scabies mite home remedy" on the page. Rough looking? Scabby?
2) "…he bought her a frozen yoghurt." (page 81) I didn't know yogurt could be spelled more than one way. But I had learned from another book that yogurt is close to clabber, a dairy product I remember eating as a kid on the eastern shore of Virginia.
3)
1) "Ceramics?"
"Potsherds," he says. (page 167)
I never knew pieces of broken pottery had a name.
