Customer Reviews

Smithereens

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I purchased this novel (in the hardback) because of my interest in literature, the Gothic, and for its purported midwestern American flavor.
The entire novel reads in about 3-5 days I suppose for the average skilled reader. I read 3/4 of the novel in 2006, and put it down out of a feeling it was lost for plot and inside of itself, via its dejected teen protagonist May Caldwell. I pulled it back off of my shelf out of boredom three years later and finished it in a day, finally braving the tornadoed climax and stinging afterglow the book title tells you was coming all along.
So here's my haphazard off-the cuff reflection:
While I appreciated the etherial element, vivid imagery, progressive memory recall flashback technique, and the author's ability to acutely recreate human sensation, the novel felt overly engrossed in spiraling teenage nihilistic moral decay and the employment of that type of machinery that makes for a cheap thrill and quick read. Characters developed well throughout, but by the end of the novel I'm left with what feels like a hollywood gimmick; the author succeedeed in making 'smithereens' out of any ultimate accomplishment, and I'm not sure this novel can faithfully be considered literature.
Comparisons: is this a 1990's midwestern existential flirtation with the House of Usher? Or a postmodern bildungsroman ala Holden Caufield? Is Brodie really Lennie from Of Mice and Men? Or is the May Caldwell/Frankie alter-ego a Kim Boggs/Edward Scissorhands complex, and her mother Peg Boggs? Perhaps the novel pulls from many such archetypes...
Parental concerns: Vivid teenager seduction and sex/rape with/by an adult, strong language, 3 gruesome murder/manslaughters, several graphically depicted attempted suicides, irreverant teenager manipulation of parental figures.