- Algonquin Books
Last night I finished reading A Life in Men, a new novel by a Chicago writer named Gina Frangello. I felt compelled to read the whole thing, but I’m not sure how much I actually enjoyed it. Frangello builds suspense by playing with time and withholding information about past events that affect how characters behave in the present.
Instead, this is how I read it: as soon as I learned that something bad happened in Greece and got bored reading about Mary’s adventures in London bonding with an (unconvincingly written) American heroin addict, I skipped ahead and read all the Greek chapters first, and then went back and read the others. It was sort of like reading Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar, except my skipping was unauthorized. I didn’t feel like I was missing out on any of the pleasure that comes with an unexpected revelation or twist in the story, though, or that delayed gratification would have improved my reading experience in any way. I’m not sure if this is my fault or Frangello’s.
A Life in Men, nonlinear, did not provide that sort of enjoyment. All it did was satisfy my impatience to uncover the book’s secrets. But I wonder if I really have the right to criticize it. Would I have noticed its flaws as much, or let them bother me as much (would the structure have succeeded in disguising the problems with characters?) if I had just read it the way Frangello intended?
