I wanted to like this novel. It was rapturously received, and has an interesting concept. It tells the story of the family home of the author, and so is a story of New Orelans, of African American life, or hurricanes, and etc.
However I found it sort of dull and uninsightful. I’m not sure I’ve ever read so many thousands of words of memoir and come away with so little understanding of someone. Let me give you this taste, here, speaking of her parents:
As Simon and Ivory settled into life in the rebuilt house, time moved in the usual distinct increments (morning, afternoon, evening; weekends and weekdays), but after a while, everything new turned old and they stopped seeing time as composed of moments. The years blurred.
I mean, really? This seems a bizarre imaginative leap into the inner life of your parents. One point of interest was that the author has two names, Sarah and Monique. She says:
In its formality, the name Sarah gave nothing away, whereas Monique raised questions and could show up as a presence in someone’s mind long before I did
This I found to be true. As a fellow Sarah, I can say that the name is wonderfully anonymous. It gives away absolutely the most bare minimum about you, and makes you fantastically difficult to Google.