The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout

 

Apparently I read The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout in October 2013. I had some strong feelings about it at the time:

Let me be honest for a minute.  My life is not hard, in the sense that I know that rent will get paid, we will have food in the house, and that I have family who loves me and a cat who occasionally cuddles with me.  I am lucky and I am grateful for this.  But it is sometimes a challenge for me to get out of bed. It is all I can do to make breakfast, brush my teeth, and do SOMETHING with the day. I reward myself for doing minimal chores with reading.  And I want my reading to be entertaining. It doesn't have to be OMG hilarious or OMG happy ending all the time, but I want more than a slog through a dysfunctional family with little in the way of resolution or hope at the end.  I want my reading to be a reward and this kind of felt like a punishment.

Wow! I have no recollection of reading this book in the past, let alone writing such a scathing review.  I opened Goodreads to link to the book when I saw this review and I thought it was a mistake. But no mistake. I actually stand by the October 2013 review for the most part. It's a depressing book. There's no real resolution. It's certainly not an uplifting jaunt that will make 2020 seem better to you.

But, on the other hand, it seems so prescient in 2020. There's a theme in the Colleen Hoover book I wrote about last week, It Ends With Us, that's sort of "there aren't good and bad people - just people who sometimes do bad things" and this book is all about that.  No one in this book is perfect. They're just a family muddling through, sometimes doing okay and sometimes doing bad things. And I think that I'm much  more sympathetic about that than I was in 2013. Yes, some people are downright terrible at times, but aren't we all?  

Quotes:

1. Dust bunnies had been swept into the center of the living room, and the twilight that showed through the windows was indifferent, stark. The blank walls seemed to say wearily to Bob: Sorry. You thought this was a home. But it was just this, all long. (27%)

Whatever else you might say about Strout, she can set a tone like no one else. The melancholy seeping out of this passage is magical.

 2. The problem wasn't the city, which she hated, and which seemed slightly ridiculous, like a crowded state fair that went on for acres, the field poured with concrete, the rides underground instead of above it; it all seemed vaguely tawdry, the urine-smelling steps down to the subway, the litter skittering along the curbs, the smeared droppings of pigeons sliding down the statues, the gold-sprayed girl who stood in the park.  (80%)

I like this passage juxtaposed with the previous one because in the first passage Bob is talking about his sister Susan's house. In the second passage, Susan is describing how Bob's adopted home city makes her feel. I also like it because my first impression of NYC is always the overwhelming smell of urine and garbage everywhere.

3. A crazy parent, America was. Good and openhearted one way, dismissive and cruel in others. (86%)

Right.  If you have a bit of luck and do well, America will treat you right. If you are the least favored sibling, America is going to destroy you.

4.  Through the station window they saw the bus, like a friendly oversize caterpillar, pull into the lot. (97%)

In my general manner of marking all metaphors using animals, I noted this and thought it was unusual and super accurate.