6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
WELL-WRITTEN, COMPELLING, UNSETTLING..., December 12, 2001
The reader gets a definite sense of the narrator's age in Jenny Offill's debut novel, LAST THINGS. She views everything she relates to us openly and unflinchingly, as a child would do -- and the things she doesn't completely understand are naturally colored with the myths and stories told to her by her increasingly deranged mother, combined with extrapolations produced by her own imagination.
Grace's parents are incredibly mismatched. Her father is a complete realist, grounded in science and fact. He works as a teacher in the small Vermont town in which they live, until his objections to a prayer circle held within earshot of his office draw the disfavor of the administration. At one point, we are told that he proposed to her mother with the words 'You're the only woman I've met that will never bore me'. That's certainly proven to be true. Her mother -- who is an ornithologist working at a nearby raptor center -- is given to spouting native myths and beliefs from the far corners of the earth, sometimes obviously inventing stories on the spot to validate her increasingly odd actions. She sometimes speaks and writes in a language invented for her by her father, and attempts to teach it to Grace. When her pronouncements and beliefs begin to seep into her daughter's behavior at school, she vows to home-school young Grace, and the girl is pulled further into her mother's fantasy world.
Children usually remember events clearly but in a spotty way -- when speaking of memories, they tend to bounce from one to the next, not concerned (as an adult narrator might be) with beginnings and endings, with smoothing out the rough edges of memory. They remember the parts that have the greatest emotional effect on them, either directly or obliquely. Offill has reproduced this tendency by giving her young storyteller an accurate voice -- it's not a stretch for us to imagine that we're listening to the story through Grace's own words. That being said, the writing is very polished and effective -- as the book spirals through scene after scene to its climax, the effect is very much like a wild dream that comes with the fever of an illness. It's a powerful current that draws the reader in, making the book difficult to put down.
It's an interesting ride -- but there's an aching sadness left at the thought of what the shenanigans of Grace's parents are doing to her, to what sort of long-term effects they might have on the impressionable psyche of an 8-year-old girl. It makes me wonder if the two of them gave any thought to how they would raise a child once they had one. Her mother is hopeless, and her father, although he's a bit more grounded in reality, seems completely clueless in relating to his daughter. I can't imagine her emerging from this ordeal without having a fairly skewed view of the world.
It's an odd little book -- but very skillfully written, interesting and entertaining. Sometimes it's pretty scary to look as an adult through the eyes of a child -- it makes for a compelling read.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
In a Child's Voice, May 16, 2000
This review is from: Last Things (Paperback)
A tale of extrordinary people and circumstance, Jenny Offill's greatest feat is reaching back; somehow finding the unspoiled voice of childhood. Offill puts that voice to paper with great dexterity and wonder. Authors often assume different voices for their works. Offill here accepts the clumsy task of doing so with a child's parlance. Without unclouding the child's future,(a task that ruins so many similar works), Offill creates a moving story of a very gifted little girl, Grace, whose future is taxed by her mother's progressive mental illness. The beauty of the work is that, precocious as she unmistakably is, Grace does not see her own life, even her own mother, as beyond normalcy. The novel, in a sense claustrophobic is are many childrens' worlds, is also full of the innocent blue vistas that are a part of a child's ready euphoria. The juxtaposition of these two natures in childhood, and as embodied in Grace, are what makes this novel different and special. Grace has not yet been taught to honor the imaginary line between sanity and mental illness. Her resultant, innocent fealty to her sick mother is the endearing legacay of this story.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Charming and Magical, January 24, 2000
I enjoyed this book immensely. I think the narrative structure device using the history of the universe in relation to the period of 365 days is incredibly effective. The characters are a little shaky on the descriptive end, however I'm not certain that this isn't intentional in order to magnify the "magical realist" aspect of the narrative. In general, I found the book haunting and resonant in many ways. I look forward to reading the next novel Ms. Offill.
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