Two Shall be Born

I mostly avoid reading Marie Conway Oemler books I haven’t read before — I dread the point at which there won’t be any left I haven’t read. So I’ve been putting off reading Two Shall Be Born for, like, five years at least.

I don’t know if it was worth waiting for. I don’t, at this point, expect any book of hers to live up to Slippy McGee or A Woman Named Smith, and this one certainly doesn’t. But that’s not to say it isn’t pretty interesting and weird, and that’s all I really want, I guess.

The Annals of Ann

Mel was reading this one, and it sounded interesting, but I don’t think it’s for me.

The Annals of Ann is by Kate Trimble Sharber, who a quick google search told me nothing about. But the book itself is pretty straightforward: Ann is a teenager who lives somewhere in the South with her parents and her mammy, and she uses her diary mostly to talk about her various acquaintances pairing off.

The book is one of those teenage girl diary ones where the author is relying heavily on the reader getting jokes that the narrator doesn’t. And that’s worked for me approximately once, in The Visits of Elizabeth. The rest of the time I find it a little irritating and uncomfortable. If you like that kind of thing, I think this is probably a pretty good version of it. I wasn’t tempted to put it down or anything. I just kind of resent it when authors are like, “hey let’s have a joke on the protagonist of my novel together.”

Discussion group!

I’ve created a Google Group because a) it seemed like the best compromise between a forum and a mailing list and b) I’m pretty familiar with the back end.

So, don’t feel obligated to participate, but if you want, head over and introduce yourself.