Lisa Lutz: The Spellman Files
Oct. 17th, 2010 04:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
I was in the modd for some funny ficton, so I grabbed this book in the library, thinking it might provide some decent bedtime entertainment. Boy, was I wrong.
The characters are completely unlikeable. I suppose the dysfunctional family described in the book is supposed to be funny and endearing. I found them creepy and annoying. The story focuses on Isabelle, the middle child of two private investigators. Isabelle has two siblings: David, her perfect lawyer older brother, and Rae, the spoilt smaller sister who lives on sweets. there s also Uncle Ray, a drunk whi fights the "Ray/e wars" with the smallest sister.
Where to even begin why I find these people annoying and creepy? Isabelle herself used to destroy things in her youth "just for fun" and still mostly enters buildings through windows rather than through doors. I completely didn't like her. However, it's not so much the characters individually as the whole family that's annoying: apparently it's supposed to be funny when Isabelle, after 11 years of working for her parents, wants to leave the family business and her parents take out the car's battery so she can't leave, or he rcar's headlight is regularly crashed so she is easier to follow (or when she does that to other members of her family), or when Rae breaks into Isabelle's room to unpack her boxes. Or when Rae fakes her own abduction. Things like that.
Then we have the "plot". In quotation marks because the plot is extremely sparse. There is a bit of a sort-of investigation into the disappearance of a boy a dozen years ago that starts about halfway through the book. And the book is supposed to be framed by Isabelle being questioned in regards to Rae's disappearance. However, in that context, the books really doesn't make sense, because a lot of it is about Isabelle's ex-boyfriends and boyfriend and so on, things that would never be mentioned in such a context.
And well, the "plot" is also pretty badly told. For example, Isabelle drives somewhere to question an important person and then all we hear about that conversation is maybe 10 lines of dialogue before she leaves again. She doesn't come across as very competent.
I don't think I have ever related less to a book's main protagonist.
The characters are completely unlikeable. I suppose the dysfunctional family described in the book is supposed to be funny and endearing. I found them creepy and annoying. The story focuses on Isabelle, the middle child of two private investigators. Isabelle has two siblings: David, her perfect lawyer older brother, and Rae, the spoilt smaller sister who lives on sweets. there s also Uncle Ray, a drunk whi fights the "Ray/e wars" with the smallest sister.
Where to even begin why I find these people annoying and creepy? Isabelle herself used to destroy things in her youth "just for fun" and still mostly enters buildings through windows rather than through doors. I completely didn't like her. However, it's not so much the characters individually as the whole family that's annoying: apparently it's supposed to be funny when Isabelle, after 11 years of working for her parents, wants to leave the family business and her parents take out the car's battery so she can't leave, or he rcar's headlight is regularly crashed so she is easier to follow (or when she does that to other members of her family), or when Rae breaks into Isabelle's room to unpack her boxes. Or when Rae fakes her own abduction. Things like that.
Then we have the "plot". In quotation marks because the plot is extremely sparse. There is a bit of a sort-of investigation into the disappearance of a boy a dozen years ago that starts about halfway through the book. And the book is supposed to be framed by Isabelle being questioned in regards to Rae's disappearance. However, in that context, the books really doesn't make sense, because a lot of it is about Isabelle's ex-boyfriends and boyfriend and so on, things that would never be mentioned in such a context.
And well, the "plot" is also pretty badly told. For example, Isabelle drives somewhere to question an important person and then all we hear about that conversation is maybe 10 lines of dialogue before she leaves again. She doesn't come across as very competent.
I don't think I have ever related less to a book's main protagonist.