You're from Chicago? So am I (at last for the past 29 years.)
I'm in the hater's column on this one for many reasons. First: she does have a gift for vignettes, and individual scenes. But she doesn't have a talent for tying them together in a way that's ultimately satisfying. The first time I was actually moved was practically at the last scene, and that isn't enough of a payoff, because it was almost by accident. Talented writers who don't care enough to use that talent to create a unified whole are apt to make me crazy. Or angry.
Second - and this comes from a lover of the SF genre, and I've been told that means it's just the natterings of a prisoner of the genre who doesn't appreciate it when a mainstream author takes the genre's conventions and fucks them up completely uses them in a bold new way, so take it as you will - she is like every other damned dilettante who figures they can waltz in, play with someone else's tools, and use them incorrectly because they're artists and the genre writers who use the tools correctly are just hacks. And then gets praised by mainstream critics for being "fresh" and "genre-bending." There are any number of skiffy or fantasy authors who have twice the subtlety, twice the knowledge of the human heart, and twice the elegance that Audrey Niffenegger has, but they get dismissed because of the genre in which they choose to work.
And, if they're going to make time travel a core part of their story they will either pay attention to the conventions of time travel if they're paying lip service to a scientific framework, or they'll play it completely as a fantasy. They won't try to have it both ways.
In a word? Argh.
Also, and this was pointed out to me after I'd developed a distaste for the book, but added to the bad taste in my mouth, the lead female character displays a selfishness that is mind-blowingly, cosmically horrible.
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I'm in the hater's column on this one for many reasons. First: she does have a gift for vignettes, and individual scenes. But she doesn't have a talent for tying them together in a way that's ultimately satisfying. The first time I was actually moved was practically at the last scene, and that isn't enough of a payoff, because it was almost by accident. Talented writers who don't care enough to use that talent to create a unified whole are apt to make me crazy. Or angry.
Second - and this comes from a lover of the SF genre, and I've been told that means it's just the natterings of a prisoner of the genre who doesn't appreciate it when a mainstream author takes the genre's conventions and
fucks them up completelyuses them in a bold new way, so take it as you will - she is like every other damned dilettante who figures they can waltz in, play with someone else's tools, and use them incorrectly because they're artists and the genre writers who use the tools correctly are just hacks. And then gets praised by mainstream critics for being "fresh" and "genre-bending." There are any number of skiffy or fantasy authors who have twice the subtlety, twice the knowledge of the human heart, and twice the elegance that Audrey Niffenegger has, but they get dismissed because of the genre in which they choose to work.And, if they're going to make time travel a core part of their story they will either pay attention to the conventions of time travel if they're paying lip service to a scientific framework, or they'll play it completely as a fantasy. They won't try to have it both ways.
In a word? Argh.
Also, and this was pointed out to me after I'd developed a distaste for the book, but added to the bad taste in my mouth, the lead female character displays a selfishness that is mind-blowingly, cosmically horrible.
Not that I've thought a lot about it. Ahem.