Alicia

Ergh. I so wanted to be completely blown away by this book, to get so wrapped up in this intricate story that Pessl had created of films and plots and secret family histories and the pseudo-paparazzi attempting to break into this seemingly magical world created by the brilliant reclusive film director and the artists who attend his side. This is a book that I unconsciously have always wished to have been written, and have always wanted to read.

Perhaps my unknowing personal investment in the success and believably and fullness of this story is what turned me away from it with such disappointment. I did feel the necessity to read this one through to the end, seeing the time and effort I had put into it as far as I'd gotten without much payoff. A few quick points on my frustrations:

1) Too much and too little. As a thriller, there are very few thrills. Clues are laid out simply and delicately, and although there is a wealth of information and “evidence”, everything is conveniently packaged to deliver our protagonists to exactly what they seek, and without much effort. The plotting is full of so much detail - background and minutiae about Cordova's films, artifacts from news media and fan websites littered throughout the book as “hints,” even a separate app (which I couldn't get to install on my device) which added a multimedia element to the narrative - but so very bereft of any weight or feeling of cohesion. So we have a giant pile of facts and information and so what? It seemed, at times, that I could have been sifting through the apocryphal remains of every single one of the ideas of one writer that never were used.

2) So many italics! I appreciate the effort that was put forth to add emphasis to at least one word in nearly every sentence in the book, but I do not appreciate the assumption that I need to be led to understand that everyone is extraordinarily excited about everything they say. Quite the opposite from making me feel the excitement, it just felt overly bored and heavy with effort. These people needed desperately to convince me to feel excited about what they were saying and they pushed me just too, too hard.

3) All of our characters - even the elusive Cordova - felt flat, if not merely derivative and lazy. I couldn't have cared any less about seeing any of these individuals through to their goals; Scott was simple and self involved and not particularly bright; Hopper was James walked straight out of Twin Peaks and into New York City, still in love with his Laura Palmer/Ashley Cordova; an attempt to write Nora as lost, fierce, frightened, determined, and fated came out as a broken 11-year-old with a wacky wardrobe and no more reason than any of the others. Even Cordova was a cobbled together Kubrick-Jodorowsky blankness that felt more of an omission by mistake than mystery.