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Thoughts?

Pers'nally, I didn't like it as much I expected to, although I did enjoy it. I liked the writing tremendously at first, but then my fondness for it sort of... diminished? Not exactly - I still liked individual images, and heaven knows there were an overflow of really lovely scenes, but I tired of it nevertheless, somehow. Maybe if I had read it in multiple sittings, instead of in nearly one; as it was I tired of prettiness and twisted glamor and started longing for something more... haha, I don't even know. Solid? Maybe. Prosaic, yes. Mediocre. I didn't like Astrid as much as I could have, I suppose. Or, well, that's not exactly true; I liked her fine, sometimes I loved her, but I didn't enjoy reading about her overmuch. Call me a - I don't know what the word would be, 'someone in denial', but that doesn't roll off the tongue, does it? - well, yes, I am in denial but I don't enjoy reading about all those extremes, agony or ecstasy or both, /constantly/ almost, even in worlds where the middle ground seemed to hold sway. And I would have preferred humor and... more humanity, sometimes, the humanity of the majority rather than the extraordinary, where she had strewn beauty.

I also had trouble with the ending - not the ending as a whole, actually I quite liked that, but the final lines, which were abruptly, jarringly filled with thoughts of L.A. and California. And I wondered - wonder - about Ingrid's choice, about the supposed 'tempering' of her extremity, Astrid's sole triumph, when maybe that was really just an extension of Ingrid's freedom, ambiguous, unexplained. But perhaps that was just me.

So what about the rest of you who've read it? Did you encounter a similar limit to how much of the aesthetic glory you could swallow?

Sometimes the writing seems a bit self-conscious. I can't tell if Fitch just really got into character, or if that was just a mistake on her part, but overall, it was one of my absolute favorite books. It tasted almost real. What few people realize is that it's possible to live a life of extremes.

The endingmwas one of my favorite parts. The last line haunts me. Ingrid, though physically limited to the periphery of her daughter's life, was nevertheless present throughout the course of the novel. It's more true-to-life than most mother-daughter relationships I've encountered in books. It's true. Mothers don't fix everything--some exploit you, use you, want to throw you against a wall. It wasn't to say that her extremity was tempered at all--merely that she made one choice to show Astrid the nature of her love. After all, she still plans to model nude for Playboy.

There was humour in the book, but it was very dry. But I like my humour like I like my wine, so it suited me perfectly.