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A review by hopebrasfield
The Weekend by Charlotte Wood
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Quick thoughts:
A group of three friends--consisting of a mistress know-it-all, a broke has-been actor, and a washed up professor--confront the ghost of their Perfect Dead Friend™️.
This type of plot isn't usually my style, but I sure did enjoy the characters. As a whole, this book is great fodder for your journal, your upcoming therapy sessions, and your falling-asleep-anxiety-fantasies.
The author goes in and out of different POVs throughout the novel, which made it challenging at times--though in a purposeful way that pays off by the end, I think.
Memorable quotes:
“This was something nobody talked about: how death could make you petty. And how you had to find a new arrangement among your friends, shuffling around the gap of the lost one, all of you suddenly mystified by how to be with one another.”
"She had always been an outsider. All artists were. The thing she'd done that was unforgivable was to stay in the theater while other people got proper jobs. She'd spent her life living all the parts of herself, while normal people lived along the slenderest, most limited path of experience. They did not know themselves in the least. She made art, not money. And that, like slouching, was alright when you were young. Artistic poverty was romantic when you were 30. It was after 50 that people began despising you for it."
Recommendations:
I'm recommending this to everybody I know because I am cruel! Or, because I'd like to talk with friends about how the characters moved and felt and thought as one and apart and back together again; about the political economy of the characters' lives; and about the insights we get into object relations via these characters at this particular time in their lives.
A group of three friends--consisting of a mistress know-it-all, a broke has-been actor, and a washed up professor--confront the ghost of their Perfect Dead Friend™️.
This type of plot isn't usually my style, but I sure did enjoy the characters. As a whole, this book is great fodder for your journal, your upcoming therapy sessions, and your falling-asleep-anxiety-fantasies.
The author goes in and out of different POVs throughout the novel, which made it challenging at times--though in a purposeful way that pays off by the end, I think.
Memorable quotes:
“This was something nobody talked about: how death could make you petty. And how you had to find a new arrangement among your friends, shuffling around the gap of the lost one, all of you suddenly mystified by how to be with one another.”
"She had always been an outsider. All artists were. The thing she'd done that was unforgivable was to stay in the theater while other people got proper jobs. She'd spent her life living all the parts of herself, while normal people lived along the slenderest, most limited path of experience. They did not know themselves in the least. She made art, not money. And that, like slouching, was alright when you were young. Artistic poverty was romantic when you were 30. It was after 50 that people began despising you for it."
Recommendations:
I'm recommending this to everybody I know because I am cruel! Or, because I'd like to talk with friends about how the characters moved and felt and thought as one and apart and back together again; about the political economy of the characters' lives; and about the insights we get into object relations via these characters at this particular time in their lives.