Early Review: What We All Long For
As a LibraryThing member, I not only get to catalog my books in a manner that makes my inner OCD feel calm and satiated, but I also get to, through their Early Reviewers program, read books prior to their publication date and offer my own candid views on these works.
I recently finished my review of the upcoming What We All Long For, by Dionne Brand. For the benefit of those who don't typically look at my LibraryThing profile, I've reprinted the review I've written below, so that it might get a bit more exposure for those interested in the novel.
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I've spent quite a while trying to figure out how to start a review for What We All Long For, and each time I do I delete it and start anew. I feel like it's due to the fact that the novel is a tricky one to pin down: a work that is invested in multi-ethnicity but doesn't quite nail it; a work that features a mystery but isn't that mysterious; a work that wants to make a case for desire but also for a politics of morality. In the end, it tries but I'm not sure it succeeds on these counts.
The core issue with What We All Long For seems to stem from a plot that features numerous narrative perspectives and several main characters, but seems to meander rather than point in a certain direction. The main focus of our attention is on Tuyen, a second-generation Vietnamese-American lesbian who is struggling through both making a living as an artist and winning the affections of her neighbor and best friend Carla, who adamantly denies any homosexual tendencies. While Brand could have made a number of interesting interactions between the women, she instead stresses the silences and absences of discussion, perhaps to let the reader think there's a void to be filled, but coming off mostly as being indecisive about how to address the awkwardness.
Carla's silence, we learn, reflects her inability to deal with her brother, Jamal, who is constantly finding himself in trouble from which Carla must bail him out. While Jamal takes a secondary role in the novel, Carla's reactions to him and to how her family treats Jamal are some of the most poignant passages in the novel, a true domestic strife that comes off as authentic despite moments that threaten to descend into schmaltz. Sure, Jamal is played off to be a caricature, but at least he elicits genuineness from Carla, who reveals a deceptively hidden roundness at those moments.
This subplot, however, is underused, as are many other plots that tangle themselves throughout the novel. Tuyen's friend Oku, a black man who desires the love of Jackie, a clothing store owner already in a committed relationship, is the responsible foil to the somewhat immature Tuyen, but doesn't come off as being terribly influential to her, existing within his own story in too isolated a manner.
The same happens, most unfortunately, with the novel's most self-conscious attempt at a mysterious sub-plot: the disappearance and eventual return of Tuyen's long-lost brother Quy, who disappeared at the dock as her family left Vietnam for Toronto. Quy's first-person journey is intriguing but, again, underused -- he vanishes for long stretches of pages at a time and his tale, while fascinating, is simply not substantial enough to warrant the deviations. And while his potential return and the impact of that return on the dynamic of Tuyen's family (particularly on her long-suffering brother Binh) has incredible potential, it is hinted at but never truly mined to its fullest.
All of which leads to a finale that throws a huge wrench into the proceedings and threatens the very foundational relationships of the novel, but cops out from exploring them deeply. It's as if Brand wants us to decipher for ourselves what will happen to the people we've seen now that we have this event to consider, but it feels instead as if she simply didn't know what to make of it herself and simply cut the book off at that point. Like so many other elements of the novel, Brand has ambitious plans but falls short of executing them, leaving us wanting instead of deliberating, ironically longing for more but having nothing left to work with.
As an infusion, the novel struggles to piece everything together. From the awkward implementation of slang to the lack of development of the subplots, the novel comes off as an ambitious idea that the author couldn't quite pull off, a success in conception but a failure in execution. There's enough here to suggest that Brand has talent and ability, but What We All Long For is not necessarily the highest realization of either.
I recently finished my review of the upcoming What We All Long For, by Dionne Brand. For the benefit of those who don't typically look at my LibraryThing profile, I've reprinted the review I've written below, so that it might get a bit more exposure for those interested in the novel.
------------------------
I've spent quite a while trying to figure out how to start a review for What We All Long For, and each time I do I delete it and start anew. I feel like it's due to the fact that the novel is a tricky one to pin down: a work that is invested in multi-ethnicity but doesn't quite nail it; a work that features a mystery but isn't that mysterious; a work that wants to make a case for desire but also for a politics of morality. In the end, it tries but I'm not sure it succeeds on these counts.
The core issue with What We All Long For seems to stem from a plot that features numerous narrative perspectives and several main characters, but seems to meander rather than point in a certain direction. The main focus of our attention is on Tuyen, a second-generation Vietnamese-American lesbian who is struggling through both making a living as an artist and winning the affections of her neighbor and best friend Carla, who adamantly denies any homosexual tendencies. While Brand could have made a number of interesting interactions between the women, she instead stresses the silences and absences of discussion, perhaps to let the reader think there's a void to be filled, but coming off mostly as being indecisive about how to address the awkwardness.
Carla's silence, we learn, reflects her inability to deal with her brother, Jamal, who is constantly finding himself in trouble from which Carla must bail him out. While Jamal takes a secondary role in the novel, Carla's reactions to him and to how her family treats Jamal are some of the most poignant passages in the novel, a true domestic strife that comes off as authentic despite moments that threaten to descend into schmaltz. Sure, Jamal is played off to be a caricature, but at least he elicits genuineness from Carla, who reveals a deceptively hidden roundness at those moments.
This subplot, however, is underused, as are many other plots that tangle themselves throughout the novel. Tuyen's friend Oku, a black man who desires the love of Jackie, a clothing store owner already in a committed relationship, is the responsible foil to the somewhat immature Tuyen, but doesn't come off as being terribly influential to her, existing within his own story in too isolated a manner.
The same happens, most unfortunately, with the novel's most self-conscious attempt at a mysterious sub-plot: the disappearance and eventual return of Tuyen's long-lost brother Quy, who disappeared at the dock as her family left Vietnam for Toronto. Quy's first-person journey is intriguing but, again, underused -- he vanishes for long stretches of pages at a time and his tale, while fascinating, is simply not substantial enough to warrant the deviations. And while his potential return and the impact of that return on the dynamic of Tuyen's family (particularly on her long-suffering brother Binh) has incredible potential, it is hinted at but never truly mined to its fullest.
All of which leads to a finale that throws a huge wrench into the proceedings and threatens the very foundational relationships of the novel, but cops out from exploring them deeply. It's as if Brand wants us to decipher for ourselves what will happen to the people we've seen now that we have this event to consider, but it feels instead as if she simply didn't know what to make of it herself and simply cut the book off at that point. Like so many other elements of the novel, Brand has ambitious plans but falls short of executing them, leaving us wanting instead of deliberating, ironically longing for more but having nothing left to work with.
As an infusion, the novel struggles to piece everything together. From the awkward implementation of slang to the lack of development of the subplots, the novel comes off as an ambitious idea that the author couldn't quite pull off, a success in conception but a failure in execution. There's enough here to suggest that Brand has talent and ability, but What We All Long For is not necessarily the highest realization of either.
posted by Dave at 9/13/2008 12:33:00 PM
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