DAB
01-09-2016, 1:18pm
The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie, reviewed. (http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2016/01/the_portable_veblen_by_elizabeth_mckenzie_reviewed.html)
http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/arts/books/2016/01/160107_BOOKS_Squirrel.jpg.CROP.promo-xlarge2.jpg
The book’s heroine is fond of squirrels, including the one that comes to live in her attic.
No matter how many novels you’ve read, it’s safe to say you’ve never read a novel like The Portable Veblen. A story devoted to exposing fraud in the defense procurement industry sounds like one kind of book—perhaps a John Grisham–style legal thriller. A story about dysfunctional families and the poisoned legacies that parents give their children sounds like a totally different genre. But Elizabeth McKenzie puts them together—and then adds a heroine who talks to squirrels, shoutouts to William James and Richard Rorty, and black-and-white photographs inserted into the text in the style of W.G. Sebald. She tells the story in a style so arch and whimsical that it seems almost tongue-in-cheek, yet proves tough enough to handle moments of real trauma and violence.
...
In particular, she is fond of squirrels, including the one that comes to live in her attic. Not so charmed by the visitor is her fiancé, Paul Vreeland, a neurologist whom she meets at the hospital where she works as an office temp. It doesn’t take long for the reader to understand that the couple’s opposed feelings about the squirrel—he wants to trap or kill it, she wants to make friends—bespeak a deeper opposition in personality and values that might very well ruin their relationship. For all the drama in The Portable Veblen—and the plot includes mental illness, simulated combat, and high-level government corruption—the real suspense has to do with the fate of Veblen and Paul’s love. “You seem to admire strange and difficult lives more than upright, successful ones,” he tells her, and the question that interests McKenzie is whether it is possible to have both kinds of life.
i may not be adding this to my library anytime soon....
:squirrelrun:
:faint:
http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/arts/books/2016/01/160107_BOOKS_Squirrel.jpg.CROP.promo-xlarge2.jpg
The book’s heroine is fond of squirrels, including the one that comes to live in her attic.
No matter how many novels you’ve read, it’s safe to say you’ve never read a novel like The Portable Veblen. A story devoted to exposing fraud in the defense procurement industry sounds like one kind of book—perhaps a John Grisham–style legal thriller. A story about dysfunctional families and the poisoned legacies that parents give their children sounds like a totally different genre. But Elizabeth McKenzie puts them together—and then adds a heroine who talks to squirrels, shoutouts to William James and Richard Rorty, and black-and-white photographs inserted into the text in the style of W.G. Sebald. She tells the story in a style so arch and whimsical that it seems almost tongue-in-cheek, yet proves tough enough to handle moments of real trauma and violence.
...
In particular, she is fond of squirrels, including the one that comes to live in her attic. Not so charmed by the visitor is her fiancé, Paul Vreeland, a neurologist whom she meets at the hospital where she works as an office temp. It doesn’t take long for the reader to understand that the couple’s opposed feelings about the squirrel—he wants to trap or kill it, she wants to make friends—bespeak a deeper opposition in personality and values that might very well ruin their relationship. For all the drama in The Portable Veblen—and the plot includes mental illness, simulated combat, and high-level government corruption—the real suspense has to do with the fate of Veblen and Paul’s love. “You seem to admire strange and difficult lives more than upright, successful ones,” he tells her, and the question that interests McKenzie is whether it is possible to have both kinds of life.
i may not be adding this to my library anytime soon....
:squirrelrun:
:faint: