A review by alba_marie
Liars and Saints, by Maile Meloy
3.0
{3 stars}
"He let her fall from his arms to the stone, but ther was no pain. She understood that she was going to meet her lord, and she remembered how wonderful that moment would be."
Liars and Saints is not a happy book. It is the tale of the Santerre family through the second half of the 20th century. They are hopelessly Catholic, and therefore consumed by shame, sin, repression, and an obsessive need to "be a family." Though well-written, Liars and Saints was not a particularly engaging the book. It purports to be a family saga, but is just 250 pages long. It does not have a narrator, but instead skips around to various 3rd-person POVs throughout the book. Because of the shortness of the text, we just get snippets of things that happen, with a few pages seeing the birth of a baby to the child becoming a toddler and then suddenly in school, but then we get several pages that delve into some specific incident in depth, before jutting forward more years in the next chapter.
As far as I could tell, no one was happy. There were a few brief moments of sort-of happiness, all of which seemed occur to people in their teens and twenties, and then they spent the rest of their lives miserable. Because they were all VERY Catholic (too Catholic), there was a lot of talk about what god would do and what god thinks blah blah blah -it got tiresome to hear Yvette and Teddy harp on about god as if he was their best friend who lived next door.
No one was likeable. And this weird little family somehow managed not only to have a homosexual couple (of course not accepted by the insane catholics) but also plenty of incest, adultery, divorce, teen pregnancies and secret babies.
I think the main thing to like about the book was Maile Maloy's writing, which is lyrical and Literary (with a capital L). She is a good writer, I just can't say that was very interested or invested in her choice of subject matter. I think fans of Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulker, that sort of American-style writer, might like this book.
The second half of the 20th century is surely one of the periods of history that I find least interesting. In the book, the family was so invested in themselves that exterior events had little impact on their lives (with the exceptions being WWII and the Vietnam War). But this is not historical fiction. In fact, it could have been set in any time period where women's lives were literally "you're a baby maker, and that's all." There were no dates, so it was sort of timeless, which I found unsettling.
The author would include tidbits like the president was assassinated, or Duran Duran is popular, or how the Serbians were the "bad guys" in the child's playground game, or vague references to the Gulf War - but these were easy to miss, and also, not being interested in US history or world history past about 1935, I don't know these dates by heart and didn't care enough to look. I felt slightly cheated that there wasn't more emphasis on daily lives in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s like there would be in real historical fiction.
In the end, this was a lyrical but ultimately plotless book that is heavily character driven and morosely bleak - not really my cup of tea. I prefer family sagas in which each generation gets a proper story (in the Edward Rutherford variety - but beware, his are hefty tomes of 800 pages!), and books with a less desolate outlook. It's a pretty fast read though!
"He let her fall from his arms to the stone, but ther was no pain. She understood that she was going to meet her lord, and she remembered how wonderful that moment would be."
Liars and Saints is not a happy book. It is the tale of the Santerre family through the second half of the 20th century. They are hopelessly Catholic, and therefore consumed by shame, sin, repression, and an obsessive need to "be a family." Though well-written, Liars and Saints was not a particularly engaging the book. It purports to be a family saga, but is just 250 pages long. It does not have a narrator, but instead skips around to various 3rd-person POVs throughout the book. Because of the shortness of the text, we just get snippets of things that happen, with a few pages seeing the birth of a baby to the child becoming a toddler and then suddenly in school, but then we get several pages that delve into some specific incident in depth, before jutting forward more years in the next chapter.
As far as I could tell, no one was happy. There were a few brief moments of sort-of happiness, all of which seemed occur to people in their teens and twenties, and then they spent the rest of their lives miserable. Because they were all VERY Catholic (too Catholic), there was a lot of talk about what god would do and what god thinks blah blah blah -it got tiresome to hear Yvette and Teddy harp on about god as if he was their best friend who lived next door.
No one was likeable. And this weird little family somehow managed not only to have a homosexual couple (of course not accepted by the insane catholics) but also plenty of incest, adultery, divorce, teen pregnancies and secret babies.
I think the main thing to like about the book was Maile Maloy's writing, which is lyrical and Literary (with a capital L). She is a good writer, I just can't say that was very interested or invested in her choice of subject matter. I think fans of Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulker, that sort of American-style writer, might like this book.
The second half of the 20th century is surely one of the periods of history that I find least interesting. In the book, the family was so invested in themselves that exterior events had little impact on their lives (with the exceptions being WWII and the Vietnam War). But this is not historical fiction. In fact, it could have been set in any time period where women's lives were literally "you're a baby maker, and that's all." There were no dates, so it was sort of timeless, which I found unsettling.
The author would include tidbits like the president was assassinated, or Duran Duran is popular, or how the Serbians were the "bad guys" in the child's playground game, or vague references to the Gulf War - but these were easy to miss, and also, not being interested in US history or world history past about 1935, I don't know these dates by heart and didn't care enough to look. I felt slightly cheated that there wasn't more emphasis on daily lives in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s like there would be in real historical fiction.
In the end, this was a lyrical but ultimately plotless book that is heavily character driven and morosely bleak - not really my cup of tea. I prefer family sagas in which each generation gets a proper story (in the Edward Rutherford variety - but beware, his are hefty tomes of 800 pages!), and books with a less desolate outlook. It's a pretty fast read though!