From the TBR Pile: Blog Tour: Casebook by Mona Simpson

Author: Mona Simpson
Publisher: Knopf
Date of publication: April 2014

From the acclaimed and award-winning author: a beguiling new novel about an eavesdropping boy working to discover the obscure mysteries of his unraveling family. He uncovers instead what he least wants to know: the workings of his parents' private lives. And even then he can't stop snooping.

Miles Adler-Rich, helped by his friend Hector, spies and listens in on his separating parents. Both boys are in thrall to Miles's unsuspecting mother, Irene, who is "pretty for a mathematician." They rifle through her dresser drawers and strip-mine her computer diary, finding that all leads pull them straight into her bedroom, and into questions about a stranger from Washington, D.C., who weaves in and out of their lives. Their amateur detective work starts innocently but soon takes them to the far reaches of adult privacy as they acquire knowledge that will affect the family's well-being, prosperity, and sanity. Once burdened with this powerful information, the boys struggle to deal with the existence of evil, and proceed to concoct hilarious modes of revenge on their villains and eventually, haltingly, learn to offer animal comfort to those harmed and to create an imaginative path to their own salvation.

I'm going to be upfront, I didn't finish Casebook. I have read some good reviews for the book and was looking forward to reading it. Unfortunately, I think I am in the minority when it comes to this book. The book I read wasn't the book I thought I was getting. I got about a third of the way through and gave up.

There are a few reasons that this book just didn't work for me. I didn't really like the way it was written. I know that for some people, it will work but I just couldn't get into the flow of the book. It was like Miles was just randomly telling us about things that happened to him after his parents split up. It felt very disjointed and I never got a handle on time frames for any of it. There also seemed to be a jumble of characters and I couldn't keep everyone straight. Finally, there were weird footnotes that were supposed to be from his friend Hector. I found those weird and I didn't get the point. So, I'll just chalk this on up to being not a good fit for me. Check out what others are saying (see the tour list below) and give it a try. Maybe you will "get it".

About the author:

Mona Simpson is the author of Anywhere But Here, The Lost Father, A Regular Guy, Off Keck Road, and My Hollywood. Off Keck Road was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and won the Heartland Prize of the Chicago Tribune. She has received a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Guggenheim grant, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, and, recently an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

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