Seven Loves / Valerie Trueblood

The folks over at the Litblog Co-op indicated that Seven Loves would be their next discussed book. (I may have this wrong, as I don’t really understand completely how they work there…) So I put the book on my Amazon wish/shopping list thinking I may pick it up. I don’t read a lot of literary stuff. I put that in quotes, because I disagree with snobs who denigrate speculative fiction as not literary. There are two things that are present in fiction that I usually like: plot and characters. It’s rare that I like something that doesn’t include a layered plot and layered characters. I want something to happen, and I want to care about the people it happens to.

Now, what keeps me from being a New York Times book review type reader is that things like language, symbolism, and such are supporting components in my world.

Which brings me back to Valerie Trueblood’s book. I mostly thought I would pass it by until Nancy Pearl put it in her top ten fiction reads of 2006 on her regular Monday appearance on KUOW’s The Beat. I can mostly do without the show (I prefer Weekday myself), but I love Nancy Pearl. And luckily for me, there’s a podcast of Nancys Pearl’s The Beat appearances. So when I did my holiday shopping for myself, I grabbed the book. But I have to say I’m not a huge fan.

Seven Loves tells the story of May Nilsson by drawing pictures of her relationships with seven of her loves. A man she had an affair with. Her husband. Her deceased son. A co-worker. The idea has promise. One of the ways I divvy up my life in my memories is by who I feel most strongly about at the times things happen. Who would I have rushed to tell about something? I think that our relationships with others are far more important than the things we do usually.

But in this case it doesn’t make for a great book. The prose seems deliberately obfuscating to me. I never felt like I could understand what was going on with these relationships of hers. Like walking into a party where I didn’t know anyone and they all have their inside jokes and common experiences, and they don’t feel it’s necessary to let me in on them. So I can get a feel for the, but never fully feel a part of. That’s how I felt reading the book. The characters were compelling, but the plot was not. I didn’t get to share in May Nilsson’s experiences with her. I always came in after they happened and she didn’t want to share them with me. I got a far better feel for most of her loves than I did for her, and this was frustrating. All except the cop. Him I didn’t get hardly at all.

Anyway, if you are an English major, you’ll probably like this a whole lot more than I did.

Title: Seven loves
Author: Valerie Trueblood
Imprint / publisher: Little, Brown / Hachette
Format: Hardcover
Length: 232 p.
Publication date: June 2006
ISBN-10: 0-316-05893-9
Subject: Women — Fiction
LC classification: PS3620.R84 S48 2006