Sunday
Jun222008
BOOKS: The Wentworths: A Novel
Sunday, June 22, 2008 at 12:42PM
The B List -- Books I Like
The Wentworths: A Novel
Hardcover, 255 pgs, $23.95 U.S.
What it's about: A highly dysfunctional high-society family in Los Angeles: dirty-old-man patriarch, August; uptight, cold, carefully-preserved and utterly-self-involved matriarch, Judith; outwardly-successful, yet twisted, cruel, perverse, Oedipal older son, Conrad; mother-clone, high-strung, anorexic daughter, Becky, with her cardboard stand-in, clueless, vaguely homosexual husband, Paul, and damaged children, Monica, the druggie, and Joey, the kleptomaniac; and, finally, August & Judith's younger son, Norman, who opens the book by dragging his family to the police station at three in the morning, because he's been out running around in women's clothing, make-up and high heels. It only gets worse, as far as dysfunction and anti-social behavior.
What I liked: Clinical narrative, like an autopsy; Well-written and a page-turner, in an accident-by-the-side-of-the-road-can't-look-away kind of way.
Why I didn't LOVE it: More than a little icky. Truly dysfunctional and deviant behavior; these characters, as people, are horrible, horrifying and depraved. I was expecting a glitzy, gossipy high-society tell-all, a subtle roman à clef like Dominic Dunne's An Inconvenient Woman
or People Like Us
. This is not that.
You might like The Wentworths
if you liked:
Running with Scissors: A Memoir
Interesting interview with the author: Katie Arnoldi.
The Wentworths: A Novel
by Katie Arnoldi
(The Overlook Press, 2008)
Hardcover, 255 pgs, $23.95 U.S.
What it's about: A highly dysfunctional high-society family in Los Angeles: dirty-old-man patriarch, August; uptight, cold, carefully-preserved and utterly-self-involved matriarch, Judith; outwardly-successful, yet twisted, cruel, perverse, Oedipal older son, Conrad; mother-clone, high-strung, anorexic daughter, Becky, with her cardboard stand-in, clueless, vaguely homosexual husband, Paul, and damaged children, Monica, the druggie, and Joey, the kleptomaniac; and, finally, August & Judith's younger son, Norman, who opens the book by dragging his family to the police station at three in the morning, because he's been out running around in women's clothing, make-up and high heels. It only gets worse, as far as dysfunction and anti-social behavior.
What I liked: Clinical narrative, like an autopsy; Well-written and a page-turner, in an accident-by-the-side-of-the-road-can't-look-away kind of way.
Why I didn't LOVE it: More than a little icky. Truly dysfunctional and deviant behavior; these characters, as people, are horrible, horrifying and depraved. I was expecting a glitzy, gossipy high-society tell-all, a subtle roman à clef like Dominic Dunne's An Inconvenient Woman
or People Like Us. This is not that.
You might like The Wentworths
if you liked:Running with Scissors: A Memoir
Interesting interview with the author: Katie Arnoldi.
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