Parenthetical.net

Another conference speaker with whom I was unfamiliar. She’s also a jazz singer, and gave us a lovely impromptu a capella performance (just reinforcing the sense that I was at a folk festival).

I’ll admit, I found her book tiresome. The prose is lovely, I guess, but it was a Woman’s Sexual Awakening and Learning to Free Herself From the Yoke of Her Family While Appreciating Her Roots novel. The woman in question just happened to be in high school rather than 40. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this trope, it just happens to be one that bores me.

And then Martha Brooks herself said something in her talk that crystallized for me why:

“Adults, as well as young adults, often become locked in a loop of private despair.”

I am nothing if not familiar with these loops. “Private despair” characterized most of college, in fact (well, except for the “private” part — ah, the early days of the internet over-share). But in my experience, loops of private despair are boring. In the story of my life, my despairs and how I broke out of them aren’t the interesting bit — what matters is what I did after. I don’t want to read about other people’s any more than I want to relive my own.

Also reviewed at: M/C Reviews, Quill and Quire (whose initial snarking about YA lit leads me to suspect that the reviewer prefers adult lit, and therefore it’s not a surprise that she liked this book better than I did), and 1morechapter.com.

What do you think of Loop of Private Despair novels? Do you find them compelling? Why do you think you do or don’t?