It's the first thing that leaps out about almost everything she publishes. Before I finally gave up on A Thousand Acres I wondered if she was ever gonna get over sitting on a corncob as a kid or whatever the hell it was that traumatized her, but then I gave up. Just because the NYTimes Book Review applauds and there are rapes and lots of useless meandering dialogue in a book doesn't make it literature. She seems to be trying to be a depressive Faulkner but she is just angry and depressed and writes books filled with misery because that's like REAL LIFE, man.
Argh don't get me started... ;)
"She seems to be trying to be a depressive Faulkner but she is just angry and depressed and writes books filled with misery because that's like REAL LIFE, man."
Yeah, well, it's not 'real life' if you turn your back on who you are and where you came from. 'Trancending ignorance,' as Ms. Smiley might say. What a crock. I sense this woman has some very personal issues she's trying to resolve through her fiction...but as long as she fits the template that the east coast snobs find appealing-- read: they're such louts, but she rose above it all to give readers a first-hand report of the evil she endured...her fiction isn't worth the cheap paper it's printed on. Give me Eudora Welty or Anne Tyler any day.
Good to see from her bio that she's now living in CA. The Midwest doesn't need her.