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Mount Pleasant (2013)

by Don Gillmor(Favorite Author)

3.25 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0307360725 (ISBN13: 9780307360724)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Random House Canada

review 1: Very boring. I think the main problem with this book is that the stakes just weren't high enough to make for a compelling plot. Son of extremely wealthy parents chooses career path that doesn't pay as well (journalism/academia as opposed to investment banking), lives the way he was brought up rather than in his means, gets into debt, relies on an inheritance that isn't there, then easily gets out of debt by selling his expensive house and reverting to living within his means (which is still quite comfortable). There was never any real jeopardy so it mattered little if Harry found out what happened to the money or not. Plot isn't everything, and the novel's writing was good (but not beautiful) and the characters well-drawn. I think people who enjoyed The Corrections by Jon... moreathan Franzen might enjoy this book. There's even a blurb on the back of Mount Pleasant comparing the two.
review 2: As a Torontonian, what appealed most about this novel was the familiarity of the reference points – i.e. sports teams, restaurants, landmarks. It has an intriguing concept – The idea that future generations run up unmanageable debt and are then forced to rely on the legacies of prior generations to pay it off. What happens though when the presumed legacy isn’t there? Gillmor does a great job of capturing this feeling of desperation. What doesn’t work for me in this novel is the constant shifting of moments or scenes that don’t appear to tie together cohesively. Sometimes I found myself wondering why he would use a particular motif or what the point was of travelling down memory lane in that moment. It also floats in and out between a fictional, literary writing style to a journalistic one – and this flip flopping only added to the inconsistency. The missing money storyline was awkwardly developed – it was a background item for a good chunk of the novel and then suddenly thrust to the forefront toward the end. Overall, I felt that Gillmor really captured Harry, but had some difficulty bringing the story together. less

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