Liars and Saints – Maile Meloy

Rating: 4 stars

So that break that I wrote about… it didn’t take me nearly as long to get through some things so I’m back to reading (at least temporarily). I’m also looking for comps, so I maybe shouldn’t have read a book from the early 2000s. Oh well, I’ll have to settle with having read a good book.

It is generally (not always true) that early (I’d say first, but this isn’t Meloy’s first) books by authors aren’t as good as later works, and I’ve found it true with David Mitchell (the author of Cloud Atlas), and I think it’s true here. I mean, Carrie was one of King’s best books, so uh, you know, to each their own. I did like Tommyknockers, so maybe that should disqualify me from having opinions. I haven’t read it in a long time, though.

Okay, back to the book. When I first started writing and reading, I was all into long books, like 600+ page books, and I thought the 80-110k word limit for novels was a bit silly. But now I see the wisdom of it for a lot of people. It asks people to get rid of unnecessary words and concentrate on what really is their story.

That wasn’t back to the book. This will be. There is no protagonist, and I think that might one of the (or the most) important characteristic of the author. It’s the story of a postwar (the war being the WWII) family living in California. It covers three generations, my grandparents’ generation, my parents generation, my older brothers’ generation and a little bit of mine, so the silent (or greatest), baby boomers, gen X and millennials. They all have their foibles and strengths. This is one of the times where I don’t have much to say, but I don’t think that’s anything bad. It was well written, and all the characters have their flaws and strengths. They feel fleshed out (except for maybe Margot and Owen, but I suspect that may be for a reason). I think you could read deeply into the book, but I didn’t think it was that type of book. Don’t get me wrong, but it’s not something that asks us to think too deeply, just read the book and enjoy the story it has to tell. I guess he one question it would be asking is “what’s the purpose of life?” And every character answers that differently, from religious Catholic to practical Catholic, agnostic and atheist.