The Giant's House -- Elizabeth McCracken

This is what I get for yammering on about a book that I hadn't read yet:  I didn't end up enjoying it very much.  It took me all weekend to get through it, and for me, that's a long, long time.  For a book that's only a little over 250 pages long--on a rainy weekend--it's pretty obvious that I wasn't feeling anywhere near compelled.  I only made myself finish it because I had talked it up last week.

The main problem was my own--I hate it when a book or movie starts out by telling the audience that it's going to tell the story of someone who dies.  It's the reason that I didn't like Moulin Rouge very much and it's one of the myriad of reasons that I hated American Beauty.  If I know from the beginning that a character is going to die, I automatically become detached and I'm unable to become emotionally involved with the characters.

Granted, it wasn't a drawn-out melodramatic death--I should have known that it wouldn't be, Peggy wasn't that kind of narrator--but by the time it happened, it was too late.  I didn't connect with anyone in the book.  I liked Peggy, but I never really cared about her, and honestly, I didn't really buy her feelings about James.  I just didn't get it.  Which I really don't think is the fault of the book--I thinks it's because I refused to be drawn in.

There were some great lines in it, like:

Isn't it funny how the faithful only reaffirm our faithlessness in everything except ourselves?

But Peggy's great lines didn't end up salvaging it for me.  I didn't end up liking her all that much.  I liked her observations about being a librarian (the author was one, so she gets it), and I liked her musings about people.  In general.  But I didn't enjoy any of her ramblings about James.  As he's the title character, it was a problem.

Rats.  I hate that.