The Room and the Chair by Lorraine Adams

   What to say about this book? I'm not sure if I really liked, just liked, or so-so liked this book. Hmmm. Maybe I'll have figured it out by the time I'm ready to close this review.
   First impression: Did not like the book. Had a hard time getting into it. Frankly, I wanted to skip it altogether. Ms. Adams seemed to have pulled out her thesaurus and sat down determined to use every entry; I was waiting for her to sign it Baby Kangaroo Tribiani (that would be a Friends reference, you should watch the show). Her vocabulary didn't make the book impossible to understand, but it did seem to make it stultifying to read. Hard to grasp the thread of the story also. Put the book down and finished the books from last week.
   Second impression: Finished last week's books, so time to go back to this one (read: lack of enthusiasm). Something different. Either the vocabulary lesson eased, I acclimatized to it, the story thread improved or a little of all three. Kind of liking the book. Kind of liking the characters. Feeling a little invested in their stories. A little curious as to how the story plays out.
   Some things I specifically liked: The vocabulary use was fun, if a tad/more than a tad overdone. There were some really interestingly visual turns of phrase. The characters' speech was written the way people actually speak. Think stops and starts, stutters and interruptions, incompletely spoken sentences followed by new, sometimes off topic, sentences.
   Some thing I specifically did not like: The translation of the characters' vagueness and ambiguity to the writing itself. It went beyond tone setting to impart an unnecessary lack of clarity in the story telling. Sometimes I wasn't quite sure what I was reading or was supposed to take away from what I read.
  

Favorite Quotes:

"She wanted to take the coat of appearances given her by birth and burn it away by will."

"The room was butterlies of beating questions."

"She thought they were bright, because when she looked in the mirror she saw her face transformed by the wish she brought to checking how time had played with her."

"Breaking a story was a cork trophy in an evanescent sport."

"Adam picked the mask of concern-the least convincing in his collection-and tried to put it on his face."

"It was enough for the first sensations, if one was neither too picky nor too slattern."

"He was talking with the forward motion of a cartoon cannonball."


Overall Opinion:

Hmmm, I'm still not sure. Oh! Wait a minute. My overall opinion is-ambivalent.


Rating:

???What Do You Rate Ambivelent???