Parenthetical.net

This ARC* randomly found its way into my life, and I picked it from my “haven’t read yet” shelf to take on a recent camping trip to Acadia National Park because it takes place in Maine, and I’m a sucker for reading a book while surrounded by its setting. The plot: Aslaug was raised by her possibly unhinged, ailing mother in an isolated cabin in the Maine woods, with virtually no contact with the outside world. When her mother dies, she goes on a search for her father, and finds her mother’s sister Sara, Sara’s teenage son and daughter, and the Charismatic church Sara founded. The chapters alternate between Aslaug’s life as she spirals into ever-creepier relationships with her aunt and cousins, and transcripts of her trial for their murder.

Apparently I’m the only person in the world who wasn’t so impressed. (Click that link, by the way, if for no other reason than to drool over one of the most gorgeous author sites I’ve ever seen.) I found it to be overly taken with its own intelligence, one of those books that puffs itself up all, “I am so wise, and lyrical, and full of Deep Thoughts! Fall under my spell!” A sample:

I am Aslaug Datter, daughter of Maren. I am a reflection of who Mother was, and who Mother was is a reflection of her life before me. I am closing the circle, bringing the end back to the beginning, back to Sara, the sister of Maren, a person the preacher now must exhume.

The whole book is like that. Only with more obscure information about wild plants. The author clearly did a lot of research about plants, and she wants to make sure you know it.

In a “Dear Reader” at the beginning of the ARC (it may or may not be in the published version), Meldrum wrote:

I remember that part-dream state in which Aslaug…was birthed: a state that seemed a bridge between the natural world and the supernatural, where my rational mind and my unconscious merged…. My hope is that I have somehow captured that in-between space where religion and science meet.

Slightly spoilery

I’m sorry to say that I think she actually got tangled up in the line between the two. The mysteries of the book could have had spiritual explanations, and that would have been cool with me. Instead they had logical, real-world explanations, which would also have been cool with me if she’d left them as such (except that none of them came as a surprise to me in the slightest, even though I felt like they were supposed to be shocking revelations). But to provide obvious logical explanations and yet insist on hanging on to the supernatural atmosphere? That’s just silly. “Ooooh, but she could still be a magical virgin birth!” …No she couldn’t; she just got a DNA test.

Basically, the back cover seduced me with its promise of non-linear chronology, plant lore, and creepy familial mystery (I read way too much V. C. Andrews as a kid, clearly), and then totally failed to deliver anything actually engaging. I skimmed to the end to find out the answers to the mysteries — only to discover that they were exactly what I expected all along. Meh.

*Advance Reader’s Copy