2006 book 136

Emily Barton's Brookland
I take back when I said earlier about being immersed in a good book; once again, I've disliked a critically acclaimed and much-blogged-about novel. It started off strong--it takes place in Brooklyn in the late 1700s, and primarily revolves around the eldest of three sisters who ends up taking over their father's gin distillery. Around halfway through the book, I was still seeing it as an A- kind of affair--there were some minor discontinuities, a slightly annoying main character, and way too much about how a distillery works, but the story and the half-narrative, half-epistolary premise were working for me--but then it really got bogged down as the protagonist decides to build a bridge across the East River to Manhattan. Maybe civil engineers will like this more than I did, but I definitely did not need to read so fricking much about the mechanics of bridge-building. Also, the end becomes entirely too overwrought. Like, way too stupidly melodramatic. I imagine this will end up on a few best-of-the-year lists--along with that horrid book by Ali Smith, The Accidental--but I am giving it a C.