Rooms by Lauren Oliver
Sep. 22nd, 2014 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
How do ghosts see?
We didn’t always; it had to be relearned.
Dying is a matter of being reborn. In the beginning there was darkness and confusion. We learned gropingly. We felt our way into this new body, the way that infants do. Images began to emerge. The light began to creep in.
Now everything is perfectly clear. We do more than see. We detect the smallest vibrations, miniscule shifts in the currents, minor disturbances, molecules shifting. We are invisible fingers; we play endlessly over the surface of things.
27-year-old Minna, her troubled teenage brother Trenton, alcoholic mother Caroline and daughter Amy have returned to her father Richard’s house in New York following his death. But the house has other inhabitants. Two ghosts – Alice and Sandra – have been trapped there for years – long enough to have seen Mina and Trenton as children and witnessed the breakup of Richard and Caroline’s marriage. As the family sort through Richard’s belongings and wait for the reading of the will, secrets are revealed and truths exposed for both the living and the dead …
Lauren Oliver’s first novel for adults is a literary character study about damaged individuals and damaged relationships. It’s a slickly written affair with an atmospheric supernatural element, but the plot is as predictable as its resolution and the living characters never really rose above archetypes while a subplot involving Trenton and neighbouring kooky teenager Katie was an irritating and needlessly convoluted take on the manic pixie girl trope. I did enjoy the narration from the two ghosts, particularly Sandra, a brassy broad who led a troubled life and who takes great joy in pointing out the foibles of the living and gambling on what they will do and I also enjoyed Alice’s backstory, particularly her marriage with Ed. Although there was enough here for me to keep turning the pages and Oliver knows how to turn a phrase, this wasn’t sufficiently original to excite my interest, although I would check out her other adult work.
I found Minna to be the weakest of the characters in the book – her secret is too easy to guess given her oversexed behaviour and I didn’t believe in her relationship with Amy, who seems mainly there as a plot device to keep things moving. Trenton has a little more depth but he still skirts dangerously close to a stereotypical moody, miserable teenage boy who’s obsessed with sex while Caroline is pretty much a desperate divorce who’s found solace in the bottle. Alice and Sandra do make up for this, mainly because they are able to tell more of their story in their own words, which gives them more depth and nuance. There are some great turns of phrase in the book – particularly from Sandra – and the ghostly elements are both sad and atmospheric. This book didn’t do it for me but there’s a lot of promise here for Oliver’s other “grown up” work.
The Verdict:
Lauren Oliver’s first novel for adults is a literary character study about damaged individuals and damaged relationships. It’s a slickly written affair with an atmospheric supernatural element, but the plot is as predictable as its resolution and the living characters never really rose above archetypes while a subplot involving Trenton and neighbouring kooky teenager Katie was an irritating and needlessly convoluted take on the manic pixie girl trope. I did enjoy the narration from the two ghosts, particularly Sandra, a brassy broad who led a troubled life and who takes great joy in pointing out the foibles of the living and gambling on what they will do and I also enjoyed Alice’s backstory, particularly her marriage with Ed. Although there was enough here for me to keep turning the pages and Oliver knows how to turn a phrase, this wasn’t sufficiently original to excite my interest, although I would check out her other adult work.
ROOMS will be released in the United Kingdom on 25th September 2014. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the ARC of this book.
How do ghosts see?
We didn’t always; it had to be relearned.
Dying is a matter of being reborn. In the beginning there was darkness and confusion. We learned gropingly. We felt our way into this new body, the way that infants do. Images began to emerge. The light began to creep in.
Now everything is perfectly clear. We do more than see. We detect the smallest vibrations, miniscule shifts in the currents, minor disturbances, molecules shifting. We are invisible fingers; we play endlessly over the surface of things.
27-year-old Minna, her troubled teenage brother Trenton, alcoholic mother Caroline and daughter Amy have returned to her father Richard’s house in New York following his death. But the house has other inhabitants. Two ghosts – Alice and Sandra – have been trapped there for years – long enough to have seen Mina and Trenton as children and witnessed the breakup of Richard and Caroline’s marriage. As the family sort through Richard’s belongings and wait for the reading of the will, secrets are revealed and truths exposed for both the living and the dead …
Lauren Oliver’s first novel for adults is a literary character study about damaged individuals and damaged relationships. It’s a slickly written affair with an atmospheric supernatural element, but the plot is as predictable as its resolution and the living characters never really rose above archetypes while a subplot involving Trenton and neighbouring kooky teenager Katie was an irritating and needlessly convoluted take on the manic pixie girl trope. I did enjoy the narration from the two ghosts, particularly Sandra, a brassy broad who led a troubled life and who takes great joy in pointing out the foibles of the living and gambling on what they will do and I also enjoyed Alice’s backstory, particularly her marriage with Ed. Although there was enough here for me to keep turning the pages and Oliver knows how to turn a phrase, this wasn’t sufficiently original to excite my interest, although I would check out her other adult work.
I found Minna to be the weakest of the characters in the book – her secret is too easy to guess given her oversexed behaviour and I didn’t believe in her relationship with Amy, who seems mainly there as a plot device to keep things moving. Trenton has a little more depth but he still skirts dangerously close to a stereotypical moody, miserable teenage boy who’s obsessed with sex while Caroline is pretty much a desperate divorce who’s found solace in the bottle. Alice and Sandra do make up for this, mainly because they are able to tell more of their story in their own words, which gives them more depth and nuance. There are some great turns of phrase in the book – particularly from Sandra – and the ghostly elements are both sad and atmospheric. This book didn’t do it for me but there’s a lot of promise here for Oliver’s other “grown up” work.
The Verdict:
Lauren Oliver’s first novel for adults is a literary character study about damaged individuals and damaged relationships. It’s a slickly written affair with an atmospheric supernatural element, but the plot is as predictable as its resolution and the living characters never really rose above archetypes while a subplot involving Trenton and neighbouring kooky teenager Katie was an irritating and needlessly convoluted take on the manic pixie girl trope. I did enjoy the narration from the two ghosts, particularly Sandra, a brassy broad who led a troubled life and who takes great joy in pointing out the foibles of the living and gambling on what they will do and I also enjoyed Alice’s backstory, particularly her marriage with Ed. Although there was enough here for me to keep turning the pages and Oliver knows how to turn a phrase, this wasn’t sufficiently original to excite my interest, although I would check out her other adult work.
ROOMS will be released in the United Kingdom on 25th September 2014. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the ARC of this book.
