2007 book 1

Oh man, it feels so weird to be back at the beginning!

Annie Dillard's The Maytrees
My awesome boxx picked up an advance copy for me at MLA; despite my Dillard fandom, I've actually never read any of her fiction before. This novel definitely scores high on literary merit--symbolism, especially involving the sea, and meditations on aging and dying abound. Basically it's the story of a married couple (the titular Maytrees), and tells their story in flashes back and forth in time. The thing is, I think I'm too young for this book. It's like the first time I read An American Childhood, when my mom got it for me b/c Dillard went to the same school I did--I just didn't quite get the point of it all. I was too young to understand how beautiful those sorts of ruminations can be. It's the same thing here (and it's one of the reasons I tend to avoid books being narrated by very old very horny men--I just don't get the aging thing yet, plus EW, stop writing books where 80 year olds get with 20 year olds already! It doesn't happen unless they're Hef, you know?)--it's a lovely book, and the characters are pretty interesting (though not all are entirely fleshed out), but I'm 27 and I can't relate to 60 year olds with all this history, really. I mean, basically it's a very quiet book except for one thing I don't want to spoil, so it's hard for me to explain. Um, ok. B+.