Tuesday, July 22, 2014

2014 book 176

Dylan Landis' Rainey Royal
This is one of those books that I feel like I didn't quite GET. It's somewhere between a novel and a novel-in-stories, all revolving around a young girl, the titular Rainey, an artist living in New York in the 1970s whose father is a womanizing jazz pianist and whose mother has abandoned them to go live on an ashram. All the characters are at least a little bit unlikable, and the men are wholly unlikable and entirely disgusting. Just disgusting. The sections with Rainey and her art are strong, and some of the sections with Rainey and her friends (particularly the one where we see the mysterious Tina's home life), but mostly this book just depressed me and left me wanting more. I'm not sure how intentional that is. B.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in September.

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