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The Dangers Of Proximal Alphabets (2012)

by Kathleen Alcott(Favorite Author)

3.29 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1590515293 (ISBN13: 9781590515297)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Other Press

review 1: Some lovely sentences and clasping moments, but the character development and narrative structure didn't ring quite true for me. When I noticed a blurb referred to the novel as written in "fugue states," that made sense and I liked the concept and thought maybe I could forgive the confusing structure... but then I was in a pissy mood and I really couldn't forgive the several occurrences of a huge literary pet peeve of mine, which is the inarticulate use of the word "intricate." (Admitting that last thing out loud makes me feel like a serious jerk.)
review 2: I love to read, and I have a fairly large vocabulary. I had to look up quite a few words as I was reading this, and it distracted me to the point of putting it aside in favor of reading the two other boo... moreks I was in the middle of. I'm obviously not a perfect grammatician (since I apparently make up words and end sentences in prepositions) but I don't enjoy having my reading flow disrupted by lots of BIG words. Some of them were unnecessary and made me feel like Ms. Alcott had a Thesaurus on hand and used it just for the sake of using it. Now that that is off my chest, I mostly enjoyed reading this story about two brothers and the neighbor girl growing up together amidst loss and dysfunction. The story is told by Ida, and it jumps between past and present. I didn't love it as much as I expected, because it seemed to just touch the surface of the real meat of the story. And just as I was really getting into it, the ending came abruptly. Overall I gave 4 stars because I did enjoy it and it was a quick read. I would recommend this book if you have a rainy afternoon and need a book that gives you something to think about. less

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