August 7, 2013
At the end of the day I'm not entirely sure what Ms. White was trying to say with the eloquently written but hollow "A Place at the Table."
The novel follows the meandering and eventually intersecting lives of three very different characters; Alice an African American woman who journey's through a difficult childhood in 1920's North Carolina to find herself a rising culinary star amongst the intellectual elite of New York City, Bobby a young gay man who also arrives from the south entering the vastly changed New York of the 1980's caught in the beginning of the AIDS crisis, and Amelia a socialite trapped in a miserable marriage with family secrets she's not even aware of struggling to find herself in midlife in the early 90's.
White is a powerful, poetic writer and passages in this book are downright moving but I'm bothered by the feeling of not really connecting with what was going on throughout the novel that I was ultimately left with.
There's a certain superficiality to both Alice and Bobby's characters, like they fit the stereotypical molds of "suffering African American woman" and "young gay kid from the south" but lack real substance. Its Amelia's character that is the only one that really rang true for me.
White just doesn't spend enough time with any one of her cast to truly make an impact on the reader, at least this one. Just as one story gets interesting she's off in another decade building on someone else. I was left constantly wanting more, but not in a good way.
There's also the matter of the "intersecting story line" concept which doesn't really work for me either. There's really no connection between these people other than the coincidence of them running into each other in NYC and a frankly contrived and totally out of no where M. Knight Schyamalan "twist" ending that is so out of left field as to be almost absurd.
I think what really bothers me is the parts of this book I liked I really LIKED. I felt the potential to come away from these stories truly changed and then I kept getting the rug yanked out from under me. I should have liked this more than I did.
*edited on August 7th after a friend of the author kindly let me know that she is not a "mom from the south" as I originally stated in my review (I suggested that this was the reason Amelia's character seems more developed than the others) unless we count her dogs!
The novel follows the meandering and eventually intersecting lives of three very different characters; Alice an African American woman who journey's through a difficult childhood in 1920's North Carolina to find herself a rising culinary star amongst the intellectual elite of New York City, Bobby a young gay man who also arrives from the south entering the vastly changed New York of the 1980's caught in the beginning of the AIDS crisis, and Amelia a socialite trapped in a miserable marriage with family secrets she's not even aware of struggling to find herself in midlife in the early 90's.
White is a powerful, poetic writer and passages in this book are downright moving but I'm bothered by the feeling of not really connecting with what was going on throughout the novel that I was ultimately left with.
There's a certain superficiality to both Alice and Bobby's characters, like they fit the stereotypical molds of "suffering African American woman" and "young gay kid from the south" but lack real substance. Its Amelia's character that is the only one that really rang true for me.
White just doesn't spend enough time with any one of her cast to truly make an impact on the reader, at least this one. Just as one story gets interesting she's off in another decade building on someone else. I was left constantly wanting more, but not in a good way.
There's also the matter of the "intersecting story line" concept which doesn't really work for me either. There's really no connection between these people other than the coincidence of them running into each other in NYC and a frankly contrived and totally out of no where M. Knight Schyamalan "twist" ending that is so out of left field as to be almost absurd.
I think what really bothers me is the parts of this book I liked I really LIKED. I felt the potential to come away from these stories truly changed and then I kept getting the rug yanked out from under me. I should have liked this more than I did.
*edited on August 7th after a friend of the author kindly let me know that she is not a "mom from the south" as I originally stated in my review (I suggested that this was the reason Amelia's character seems more developed than the others) unless we count her dogs!
