Customer Reviews

Bound: A Novel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book was very highly recommended to me. I'm always looking for a story that grabs me by the throat and won't let go, so was looking forward to reading this "guaranteed awesome" book! My verdict? Not bad, but not awesome either.

The story followed several different characters and, as I read the majority of it during my lunch hour, it was a little confusing at times to keep track of everyone. Would have probably been easier if I'd read it straight through, but who has time to do that nowadays?

Catherine and Oliver are a married couple, and I think they're supposed to be the main characters. There's also Catherine's mother, Catherine's childhood friend and her daughter, Oliver's children and ex-wives, Oliver's mistress, and another woman who I didn't figure out how she fit into the mix until the end of the book. All in all, a little confusing.

The book starts off with Catherine's childhood friend dying in a car accident, and the ripple effects from the accident are felt by all of the other characters. Can't say that I really cared for any of the characters, as they were all a little unlikable. Not unlikable like evil bad guys, just unlikable as in flawed and/or weak. I think I liked the orphaned teenager Cattie the most, as she seemed the only one to have a backbone and any character.

Gave this one a 3/5 as it was okay, just wasn't for me. Nelson is a talented writer and I had no complaints about the story structure or pacing or anything, I just didn't care for the characters or the plot. Think someone else might enjoy this more than I did.

I found this book extremely hard to get through. The incredible amount of tedious detail of completely unnecessary facts was unbelievable. I found the characters to be very one dimensional, and hard to like. When I read a good book, I find myself completely lost in their world; with this book, it was like reading stereo instructions. I found the writing to be pretentious. Such a disappointment.

Antonya Nelson's fourth novel is a quiet character study of the bonds of family and friendship, at times fragile and at others strong as steel. Nelson plumbs the interior lives of a small but intriguing collection of characters, probing for some understanding of these often inexplicable ties.

Set in Nelson's birthplace of Wichita, Kansas (a locale she makes no attempt to glamorize), BOUND focuses on three women, one of whom dies in a car accident as the novel opens. Misty Mueller, the victim, is the mother of 15-year-old Cattie, who flees her exclusive Vermont boarding school when she learns of her mother's death. The other member of the triangle is Catherine Desplaines, third wife of Oliver, more than 20 years her senior, a prosperous Wichita businessman with an insatiable appetite for younger women.

When Misty dies, her childhood friend Catherine discovers she's been named Cattie's guardian, indeed that the girl has been named after her. That revelation triggers an evocative chain of reminiscences of the years Catherine and Misty spent growing up together in Wichita. They are an improbable pair: Misty, who lives with her grandmother and a dubious group of male relatives "who sat unmoving like volcanoes, simmering," and "drank is if to quench the heat inside," and Catherine, the daughter of a feminist college professor, "noisy and imperious, possessing moral certainty and a confident, no nonsense heart."

The girls' teenage years are shadowed by the emergence in the 1970s of Dennis Rader, Wichita's BTK (Bind, Torture, Kill) serial killer (the house in which Misty lives is three doors down from the home of Rader's first victims), and it's only when Rader surfaces again after a hiatus of nearly 15 years that Catherine has any sense of the danger she and her friend had ignored. While recalling some of their more questionable escapades, her recollection of the countless hours she and Misty spent together have an elegiac cast, like those of the nights in which they were "inexhaustibly conversant, buzzing and pleased, two teenage girls burning bright as neon in the dark."

But Catherine and Misty drift apart, and until she learns of her friend's decision to entrust her daughter to her care, Catherine, childless herself, has no idea her former companion has forged a life as a successful real estate agent in Houston. She travels there to sift through the detritus of her friend's past and ponder whether she wants to assume the responsibility Misty has thrust upon her.

Meanwhile, Cattie and Randall, a troubled veteran living in the house where she had holed up after leaving school, take off in a decrepit car along with a dog (one of several that have close relationships to the novel's characters) and her litter of newborn puppies. The paths of Catherine and her namesake eventually intersect, and in the novel's concluding section, the two women warily explore the boundaries of their new relationship.

Despite portraying her male characters as faithless, troubled or worse, Nelson chooses to deliver some of her most acute observations through the eyes of one of them --- the philandering Oliver, whose affair with the "Sweetheart," an employee young enough to be his granddaughter, is the focus of much of his thought, when he's not worrying about fending off inevitable physical decline. "Did a life seem longer if you were leading two of them?" he muses as he embarks on his thrilling new relationship. Contemplating Cattie, he observes, "Teenage girls were graceless, moody, insecure, bad actors, annihilatingly melodramatic in the way of the suicide bomber: ready to claim collateral damage."

Though some writers who concentrate on short stories suffer in the longer form, Nelson adapts the skills she's displayed in six collections to great effect here. Her characterizations are carefully etched, and her prose is precise and razor-sharp, as in this one of many of Catherine's vivid recollections of her troubled friend: "It wasn't as if Misty's life had seemed ideal, back in high school; it had been, in fact, a frightening specter, grubby and violent. A life Catherine had been allowed to visit, and then leave, like a privileged tourist dunked briefly into the third world but in possession of a round-trip ticket out."

Like life itself, there's nothing especially tidy about the ending of BOUND. Nelson has carved out some generous slices of a handful of lives and has served them up to us in all their messy complexity. There are no fireworks here, only the light shed by an accomplished writer's unblinking attentiveness.

--- Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg

This book was both on the NYTimes notable book list and recommended reading in The New Yorker.
I read it in 24 hours, because I could not put it down. I loved the style, the characters and the setting, but I loved the various dogs in the book the most. A very worthwhile read. I'm looking forward to reading her other work now.

The novel begins with a fascinating scene featuring the surviving dog (several dogs play into the novel) in a major car accident. This scene immediately captured my attention and curiosity. However, the following story is not nearly as interesting.

It is primarily a character-driven novel and it is a good thing that Nelson is a good writer. Her characters in this original family drama are fully developed and she clearly understands human nature. One brief paragraph about a Westerner's initial experience in Vermont exactly described how I first felt when I moved to New Hampshire.

I just didn't sympathize much with any of the characters and I kept reading only to find out if something, anything was going to happen. A few of the characters might have understood their miserable selves slightly better and realized the possibility to change themselves (they hadn't actually done it yet).

Bound is a difficult book for me to review, simply because I care so very little about it. The characters were fine. The plot was OK. The writing was inoffensive but not particularly skilled. There was an entire subplot about a serial killer that seemed to be completely pointless, mostly because the tension wasn't built appropriately, and the resolution of said subplot was underwhelming.

I was left with the feeling that this book needed to be both much longer, and much shorter. Nothing was really developed very well, yet it seemed like the author went on and on about every detail. Overall, though I appreciate receiving it from the Goodreads First Reads program, the book was highly unsatisfying and I wouldn't recommend it.

I thought this was a great read. Couldn't put it down. Would've liked a better ending, though. Not that it was bad, but the story just stopped.

A super interesting story that was named a NY Times Notable Book of 2010. Set in Wichita, KS the author spins a tale about several primary relationships: A woman named Catherine married to a guy named Oliver who seems to get restless every some odd years and wants to marry a younger woman. He has gone through several marriages and is thinking of moving onto his next one. Catherine his current wife had a good friend when she was younger named Misty who had a daughter named Cattie (named after Catherine) who died in a car accident and left guardienship of Cattie to Catherine. The story takes several twists and turns and even has a serial killer nick-named BTK woven into the story. Nelson's writing kept me entranced all the way through; I felt that there was always something right around the corner that would throw the story for another signifcant turn. I recommend it highly.

This book tells it like it is when it comes to human behavior. Several characters are unhappy because of the bitter memories that fill their skulls and shape their actions. They are extremely cynical. They coldly analyze others and take any advantage they can. They may act nice, but they are never virtuous.

The central character is Oliver Desplaines, sixty-nine and approaching a seventieth birthday; a seventieth birthday that is not what it seems. He is in his third marriage and plotting a fourth. For decades, he has followed a pattern of pursuing a much younger woman while he is married. After a lengthy affair, he dumps the wife and marries the girlfriend. He made a lot of money starting "dozens" of businesses in Wichita, including spas, restaurants, bars, and theaters. He often micromanages the ventures himself. While he's running a business, he exerts great sway over the employees, who often include attractive young women.

Catherine, his third wife, plays an important role. The book flashes back to her teenage friendship with Misty, over twenty years earlier. When Misty dies, Catherine becomes the guardian of Misty's teenage daughter. Suffice it to say that it's all far more complicated (and much more interesting) than the last two sentences make it appear.

I came to really wonder how it would all turn out. Author Antonya Nelson skillfully constructed the kind of reality-based straightforward tale that I most enjoy. Up to the ninety-eight percent mark or so on my Kindle, it was extremely well written. But, it seems to me, the novel just fizzles out at the end, and a shining five star work became a four.

I cannot even get through the book. Too wordy, to much introduced at once. It seemingly begins a whole new book in the middle of a chapter. I have never read a book by this author and would like to know if the other books are better.