In Ann Napolitano’s Hello Beautiful, every character is a despicable human being except for the lesbian and the black guy who are angelic.
Of course, the novel made it onto the Oprah Book Club.
Predictable
Opinions, art, debate
Opinions, art, debate
In Ann Napolitano’s Hello Beautiful, every character is a despicable human being except for the lesbian and the black guy who are angelic.
Of course, the novel made it onto the Oprah Book Club.
Clarissa's Blog 
” except for the lesbian and the black guy who are angelic”
I keep waiting for a Scandinavian crime show where the Middle Eastern immigrant suspect ends up being guilty…
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Recently took a stab at The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. Every character is gay, at least sometimes, and it seems oral sex is mandatory for Sympathetic Characters. I guess that’s how you get published these days. Reminded me why I no longer read anything that says “NYT Best Seller List” anywhere on the cover. Like, oh, here’s a book with a sort of interesting premise… now we’re gonna take that premise and pile on every single fashionable modern convention until you can’t tell it apart from any other book on the market.
Might as well be cleaning the sludge out of the garbage disposal on someone else’s sink.
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Napolitano strictly follows the rule that every fourth character must be gay. 1, 2, 3, gay. 1, 2, 3, gay. It’s done with military precision.
I guess the new dispensation has dropped: a quarter of the population was always gay at any time in history.
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What was most disappointing, IMO, was we had a premise of someone living for 300 years… and it is still exactly like every single other book I’ve ever read involving young single childless people living in NYC. And young single childless people in NYC are the most tediously boring people on the face of the planet. In books at least, they have no discernible means of supporting themselves (NYC is expensive! How are they paying their rents on used-bookstore-clerk incomes?). And having no cares and no responsibilities, they spend all their time going to plays, eating in cafes, viewing art installations, and having dinner parties and casual sex.
Why would I want to read about that? I mean, I’m sure it’s fun for the young people with inscrutable income streams living in NYC, but it’s not actually interesting. I can only assume the author lives there, and so is affected by the same narcissistic bubble that affects national news networks based there: absolutely nothing important happens outside NYC, but everything that happens in NYC is by definition of huge interest to the entire rest of the world.
I guess the publishing companies are located there, too.
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In VE Schwab’s universe, it’s not every fourth character– more like every fourth sexual encounter. Absolutely nobody is straight.
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