You'll know Matthew Quick for The Silver Linings Playbook, and Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock is his highly anticipated second novel.
I only recently read The Silver Linings Playbook, and absolutely adored it. Perhaps because of this, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock didn't live up to my expectations.
It's Leonard Peacock's 18th birthday, and he's wrapped up for presents for his closest friends - his neighbour, a violin virtuoso, his teacher, and the daughter of a preacher. He'll give them the presents, and say goodbye.
Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock is told through the eyes of the protagonist, whose inner voice is one I found difficult to be comfortable with. Partially, this is due to the fact that Leonard is a strange character with many problems, but mostly it was to do with Quick's writing style. For a start, he employed the letter technique he used in The Silver Linings Playbook, only here it was strange and didn't really add anything to the novel. I didn't feel like I knew Leonard well enough to work out what the letters were getting at much of the time.
The main problem, and the reason I didn't want to expend too much time working out the meaning of the letters, is that I just wasn't absorbed in the novel, and that's because it's set out a little like a scientific paper - perhaps because Leonard spends a lot of his time observing people and taking mental notes. In the book, this manifests itself in constant footnotes, which made it hard for me to find a rhythm while reading. Do I read the footnotes as soon as they're referenced? Do I wait to the end of the sentence they're referenced in? Do I wait to the end of the page or chapter? Or do I just ignore them altogether? I went for the first option, but the constant stop/start meant it was more than three quarters of the way through the book before I started enjoying the novel, and that was only because of the BIG REVEAL.
Quick is good at keeping you guessing. I tried constantly to work out what led Leonard to his actions in the novel, and none of my guesses were accurate, even though a couple came close. When the moment came, I was a little stunned, and despite having been reluctantly picking up the novel over a couple of weeks, I suddenly found myself enthralled and intrigued as to what would come next. However, even though Quick reveals what's wrong with Leonard, there's never a workable solution given to his problems, and that bugged me. There were perhaps allusions to it, but none of them were satisfying.
And that was the overall problem - I just felt a little dissatisfied at the end of Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock. I felt like it was a novel that pretty much started where it began in terms of character development. I can see what Quick was trying to do - Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock is a novel about depression, and love, and friendship, and relationships - but I just didn't care enough about Leonard until the last quarter of the book. Perhaps Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock is one of those novels I need to read again, when the ghost of The Silver Linings Playbook has fled my mind and my expectations are lower.
How I got this book: Borrowed from the library
The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer, and Showcase Sunday is hosted by Books, Biscuits and Tea
and inspired by Pop Culture Junkie and the Story Siren. They're a chance to share news, a post to recap the past week on your
blog,
highlight our newest books and see what everyone else received for
review, borrowed from libraries, or bought.
Book stuff this week on Girl!Reporter
Review: Hetty Feather by Jacqueline Wilson
Top 10 Tuesday (#14) - from page to screen
Literary London - Hampstead and Highgate Literary Festival
Review: The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick
Top five favourite moments from Roald Dahl's work
My week in books (#9) - Roald Dahl Day, types of readers illustrated by cats and dogs (so cute!), Model Misfit and more
Apart from the above, I've had a quiet week - no book shopping, no trips to the library. Which is actually a good thing, because I've been concentrating on reading some of the many unread books on my shelves, which means I've got three on the go at the moment!
Let me know what you've been up to.
Every cloud has a silver lining - that's the central thought that drives Pat Peoples throughout The Silver Linings Playbook, and it's not a bad mantra to live by, although it's also not the best.
Pat is back home with his loving mum and indifferent, mean dad after an indeterminate amount of time in a 'neural health facility'. He's waiting for 'apart time' with his wife Nikki to be over. In the meantime, he's whipping himself into great physical shape, practising being kind rather than right, reading books to better himself, and catching up with the goings-on of his favourite football team. And he's dealing with depressed Tiffany, the sister-in-law of his best friend, who has taken to following him on his daily runs.
The Silver Linings Playbook is heavy on the football. The parallels with the game are obvious, from the title to the way the different stages of the game match the different stages Pat goes through in his healing process, to the way football affects his life and his relationship with his father. Being British, I don't know much about American football, so much of the football heavy, technical talk passed me by, but I didn't feel like I missed anything by not knowing the ins and outs of touchdowns and quarter backs and the like.
But for all its football talk, what The Silver Linings Playbook is really about is a person trying to come to terms with a very different life than the one he thought he'd live. Pat is troubled, clearly. No one will tell him how long he's been in the neural health facility for, no one will talk about his ex-wife Nikki, no one will acknowledge life went on without him, even though it so clearly did. It would be easy to feel incredible amounts of pity for Pat, and to feel sorry for him as a character.
Instead, Pat's boundless optimism, rather than making him annoying, makes him a really likeable character. I didn't feel pity for him, I felt admiration. I was awed at how he was determined to find his silver lining, at how determined he was to get back his ex-wife, how he was trying to better himself (although he really didn't need to) so he could accomplish his goals. Pat is a character you can't help but like.
Tiffany, on the other hand, took some work. In the same way that Pat grew to like her because she was simply around all the time and then because of who she was, I grew to like her because she was around all the time and then because of who she was, and because I could see things about her Pat could not. Even when she was acting selfish, even through the whole second half of the novel, I understood her motives, and I still liked her.
Completely unlikeable is Pat's father, who is actually the one person in the Peoples family who could really do with going to see a psychologist and working through some of his many, many problems.
Quick is great with characterisation, but also clearly put a lot of effort into the structure of The Silver Linings Playbook. It's largely a traditional first person narrative, but then seems to take a hiatus about two thirds of the way through, at which point it turns into a correspondance between two people, before heading back to its first person narrative. I found the change a little jarring, but I found it worked for the plot of the novel.
Another thing about the structure is the way that it's so clearly filmic (not an actual word), so it's easy to see why The Silver Linings Playbook was turned into a movie (which I still need to see). Pat even narrates his life like a film, which really added to the connection I felt with him, since the way he structured his storytelling was so familiar from the many, many Hollywood happy-endings films I've seen.
The Silver Linings Playbook is a great read, which made me laugh and want to cry, which was poignant and charming, and which has me looking for every silver lining.
How I got this book: Borrowed from the library
My
week in books is a feature where I share
things I've found interesting from the past week that concern books,
literature and all things book blogging.
It's a bank holiday weekend here in England, and for once the weather's going to be good apparently. At the moment, it's a bit grey and drizzly (although not cold), which is great reading weather, so I'll be immersing myself in some good books this weekend. What's your preferred reading weather?
If you want to test yourself a bit over the next few days, Buzzfeed has a quiz here on opening lines from books. Some are very obvious, others not so much. Let me know how you get on.
I'm a massive advocate for getting children reading as early as possible, since I read lots as a child and firmly believe it helped me academically, as well as just expanded my world and gave me an escape. Schoolrun.com has a piece here on how to get children to read.
For those who love Roald Dahl, TruffleShuffleBlog has teamed up with the Roald Dahl Literary Estate for a fantastic competition here. You've only got until August 28 to enter, so get going!
A couple of things to help you get inside the minds of authors:
- I meant to link to this ages ago, but New York Magazine did a good piece on Samantha Shannon a while back, which you can find here.
- There's a great interview on Goodreads here with Matthew Quick, who answers questions from members of the site.
- MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood is released soon. To tide you over until it's out you can buy a t-shirt here, or watch this video interview with Atwood.
Kirsty Gunn at The Guardian has done a piece here about ultra long books coming back, and what that says about us as readers.
And finally, an amusing little amusing gossip piece here from Axegrinder about Harper Collins future office move.
Have you found anything interesting you want to share? Let me know in the comments.
