Red Hook Road: 07/30/17

Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman is described as a "rich and rewarding story of love, loss, and the power of family." In reality, it's a thick book report on the architecture of Red Hook, Maine, some genealogy and other facts.

The book starts with a meandering, Lake Woebegone style monolog about the two families, the home where the wedding is being held, and some other atmospheric stuff. Somewhere in the middle of all that a young couple is married and then systematically killed off in a limousine crash.

You'd think that after a tragedy is thrown in at the first fifty page or so, that the emotional pacing of the book would change. It doesn't. Instead of grief, anguish, and the other strong emotions that come with an unexpected loss at a time of great hope, the book plows forward with the same attention to the details of architecture, local history, the weather.

It was so ponderous and dull with no hope of improvement as soon through skimming and later skipping ahead, that I just had to stop. It's a boring book with boring characters who can't even be bothered to grieve.

One star

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