A review by liralen
Sweet Desserts by Lucy Ellmann

2.0

I'm beginning to think that I'm not the right reader for these grim little 90s books (this was first published in the late 80s, but...close enough), with the characters' dislike of everyone around them and a choice of language designed to shock and titillate. This particular book is packed with seemingly random snippets of text from ads and radio shows and instruction manuals and notices; they were interesting enough for a while, when I thought they might have some sort of Greater Meaning connected to the plot, but...I think this is it:

I knew I was in a bad way when I could no longer read a book. I couldn't even get through the first sentence of a book. Never since my first painful exposure to Aesop had I been without the burden of a book.

The only things I could read now were personal ads, TV guides, problem pages, recipes, technical handbooks, and junk mail... (106)

I actually relate to that to a certain extent (as somebody who is never without a book in hand but will, if desperate, resort to reading the backs of cereal boxes, the ingredient list on the box of Pflegetücher that sits on my table, etc.; and as somebody who also knows that if I can't read, I am Quite Ill), but eventually I tuned out the random snippets in the book because they were just...random. Sometimes with marginal connections to the text, yes, but I'm not really sure what they were meant to do beyond that.

I don't know. The book ends with the death of a character who is important to the main characters but not to the reader: there is confusion and grief and then the book is just...over. It got quite good reviews at the time, but...I'm no literary critic, and less interested in grim and gritty, and the experimental-ish nature of the writing / lack of characters I felt any connection with / lack of a satisfying ending did not resonate with me.