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Anne Beattie's unreviewable latest by JULIET WATERS
My Life, Starring Dara Falcon opens with narrator Jean Warner sitting by a pool in a hotel in Key West, reading a New York Times that someone has left behind. First she skims a book review about a book "that didn't sound interesting, even though the book reviewer said it was." And then she sees Dara Falcon's obituary. At the moment, unlike Jean Warner, I am not sitting by a pool reading the obituary of the most fucked-up person I ever met. Instead I'm sitting at a computer struggling with the unrewarding task of trying to write a rave review of a book that I know is going to sound really boring. This may not be the book's fault. Last Saturday someone argued in a letter to the Globe and Mail that all fiction reviews are about as interesting as people trying to describe their dreams. So perhaps fiction reviewers are forever damned to write ghostly summaries of compelling stories which wouldn't be compelling if they were simple enough to summarize in a review.
Now maybe you'll have a better understanding of my dilemma, and why I'm limiting discussion of My Life, Starring Dara Falcon to one paragraph. I'd prefer to not write about the book at all, but I'll say it's a book about this surreal little woman who's so endlessly bogus that every line that comes out of her mouth is in italics. Like a psychic vampire, she descends on a boring Connecticut family. They're already suffering from the low-grade depression that results from being boring, but she makes their lives even worse. I can't tell you all the incredibly awful things she does because it would ruin the plot, but somehow all her lying, seducing and manipulating ends up making their lives better. Why would you want to read a book I can't describe better than that? Because it will make you think of anyone who's ever fucked you over and, when you're finished, leave you feeling that the best revenge is reading well. My Life, Starring Dara Falcon by Anne Beattie, HarperCollins, 307 pp., hc, $29 |
Prayer for Dara Falcon
If you don't believe me that the best books are the hardest to review, try this trick at home. Take one of the best books you've ever read--John Irving's A Prayer For Owen Meany is a title that a lot of people pick. Now try to summarize it to someone who hasn't read it. Watch their faces as you say: "It's this amazing story about this surreal little guy with flaming red hair who always speaks in capital letters because he's always screaming. I can't tell you what he does at the end because it would ruin the plot, but it's this single heroic act that redeems all of humanity, except only the narrator really understands that."