Unsheltered

DNF at 75%. I think I read enough of this that I can reasonably discuss its themes with my book club. (My only question is - does anything ever come of the historical society with that damn falling-down house?)

So here's the thing: I make it a point of not arguing with people on the internet. In fact, I really hate arguing on the internet, or seeing others argue with each other on the internet. (It's why I'm not really on Facebook anymore, outside of a select few groups.) This book — in both story lines — feels a lot like arguing on the internet. There's a parallelism here: with the arguments people have (within the pages of this book and online), there's no room for nuance. No one is looking to learn anything, they're just looking to yell the loudest, convinced their viewpoint is the only right one. And that's exactly what I try to avoid. So I reached the point in the book where I got tired of listening to people argue. It took a while! I tried!

I enjoyed the non-arguing parts of the stories, mostly. I liked Mary and Thatcher's conversations and trips to look at plants and bugs, which surprised me because I don't really care about plants or bugs. I felt like Willa really needed to set some boundaries with her kids, and it was really shitty that Zeke had basically no interest in raising his baby, but I don't need to like the characters to like a book.

Content warnings for the parts I got to: miscarriage, suicide, racism, professors having affairs with their students (hi, professor's wife here).