Customer Reviews

The Unfinished Novel and Other stories

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

There are people whose life in the arts resembles any other job--think of someone playing the same role in a soap opera for 40 years, or the author of formulaic best sellers--and there are people whose creativity is a deep and intense part of who they are, leaving them always torn between their art and the people they're closest to.

These stories are mostly about the second type of people. And the stories do a great job of displaying them, making me think of actors, writers, and artists I knew 20-30 years ago, but that kind of realistic intensity and self-absorption won't go down easy for all readers.

There are a couple tiny bits of what seems very bad writing here--as much as I tried, I can't imagine how a person can be trapped under the back wheel of a car which came to rest on its top (is she wrapped in between the tire and the fender?)--but overall this is high quality atmospheric work.

I most enjoyed the three stories which are told from a male point of view which is something I think Martin excels at (though it might also indicate a lack of identification with female characters on my part). I haven't followed her recent work, but I loved her early novel Alexandra which is also a haunting work told from a man's perspective.

If you are inclined to favor the short story to avoid commitment to longer works, don't pick up this book. It will not be put down. Valerie Martin offers up six splendid tales that explore lives driven by artistry. The protagonists cannot escape their art and narratives are rich with unexpected detail and nuanced relationships. Love and jealousy (both amorous and artistic), bad habits and brilliance, insecurity and triumph, rabbits and cats and an owl all move across her stage.

Most of the loves are stressed and some are broken, but unlike the emptiness in Nothing Right: Short Stories, Antonya Nelson's recently released collection which also explores romantic failure, the characters here evoke the reader's deep concern. Martin is author of the Orange Prize winner, Property, which I have not read. I will.

these stories were the first encounter i have had with valerie martin. by doing the unthinkable, i judged this book by its cover and was immediately taken in by it. every story was as engaging as the next. i was actually sad when it was over! the title story is incredibly captivating with all its twists and turns. a collection of truly engaging and fascinating stories, you'll devour it in one sitting!

I love a good short story, and this book is full of them. The author's characters are well crafted and her stories come from life and the heart. The pages are full of love, revenge, jealousy (lots of jealousy), and the questions that surround the creative talent: Am I good enough? Should I sacrifice art for love/money/society? What does my art require of me, and is it too much?

The artists life in oils, the written word, the human body/love/lust, as well as every day living are the threads tying everything together, which seems to give the reader an insight to the author's personal struggles. Her overarching theme seems to be honesty in a life lived, and her stories reflect that theme through her characters' voices.

This is an excellent work, and I encourage other readers to investigate it.

I enjoyed these stories pretty well - the best ones are the last ones in my opinion. They are stories about artists and if you are not an artist, or not in a close relationship with one, you might not like these stories too well. I felt like I identified with the situations to some degree, but still found nothing extremely poignant in them. I can't say there are not better stories out there to read, but neither can I say these were not somewhat entertaining.

Without trepidation or hesitation, I declare this a very good short story collection and wholeheartedly recommend it to devoted lovers of art and literature.

In The Unfinished Novel, Valerie Martin not only displays expert craftsmanship, but she also concocts truly identifiable, interesting characters with extremely engaging plots.

It's rather common knowledge that hardcore bookworms have flirted either with the idea of writing something themselves or with some other artistic endeavor. This makes The Unfinished Novel the perfect collection for such insatiable readers. Each story focuses upon an artist of some sort - whether it be a painter, an actor, a novelist, or a poet - and each artist struggles not only with life and its challenges, but also with their craft.

Martin composes eloquent, vibrant sentences with powerful diction, and she also comprehends what it means to be a creator, thus presenting authentic, flawed characters for whom we have no trouble imagining and owning.

My only complaint with The Unfinished Novel is that Martin tends to end her stories on an abrupt, often haphazard note. She lays such solid foundation that I found myself surprised when her endings came out of nowhere and, in some cases, seemed to exist independently from the preceding plot. In most cases, this was a forgivable offense, but with the story entitled "The Bower," it really ruined an otherwise exceptional tale.

That being said, the installment titled "The Unfinished Novel" is one of the best short stories I've ever read, and I assure you, that's not hyperbole. Making up most of the book's content, this short in particular is worth the purchase price alone.

Like I already said, if you love art and literature, appreciate fine writing and astounding vocabulary, and can't get enough of realistic, captivating characters, then The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories is a must-read.

~Scott William Foley, author of The Imagination's Provocation: Volume II

In this book of 212 pages there are six short stories. The book opens with "His Blue Period", a moody narrative about an American artist with similarities to Picasso. The story is a bit dark but may be of use as a catharsis for artists whose careers have stalled.

The best and longest story in the book is the third "The Unfinished Novel". It is about a chance encounter between two authors who have a mysterious past. It is extremely well written but unfortunately has an unnecessarily explicit event at the end that mars its genius. It was almost as if I was watching the author vandalized her own work. This story has the earmarks of being an extremely important story for the author. I think it would have been more powerful had she exercised some restraint rather than exorcizing her demons.

The fourth story, "The Open Door", is a well-written but clichéd narrative of a couple with opposing traits. One is a New Englander, the other Latin, one analytical, the other emotional. The fact that the two people are lesbians in no way energizes the underlying subtext. In fact, it tends to emphasize the paucity of this overworked theme.

The final story "The Change", about an artist who is experiencing menopause, is engaging but has an ending completely inharmonious with itself and the entire collection. The author should have included some previous elements of magical realism if she was going to end the book as she did.

The title piece is by far the most enjoyable of the collection. I give the book four stars based primarily on this one story. Despite what may seem like a harsh critique her work contains an incredible amount of promise.

Valerie Martin's short story collection, The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories (Vintage, 2006) reflects the sure hand at narration and psychological insight revealed in her earlier works A Recent Martyr (Voices of the South) and Mary Reilly.

One might quibble with the focal characters-- selected from the artistic elites (honored but marginalized, depending upon your point of view). Writers may perhaps be forgiven for dallying in the subcommunities that most fascinate them, but authors of literary fiction are scrutinized even more savagely for this defect. But, as if to blunt this criticism, Martin's elites are foils for artists' inner circle of friends, lovers, acquaintances, teachers. Martin avoids several all too common pitfalls: absurd "arteest" idiosyncracies, sycophantic reverence for the creative process regardless of the interpersonal havoc it wreaks, but mostly, unsympathetically flat depictions of an underserved supporting cast.

Consider this brief excerpt from the opening story, "His Blue Period." Martin's craft interweaves the ordinary and a modestly elevated literacy.

"I spent the rest of the morning trying to paint, but I got nowhere. I could see the painting of Maria's hands clutching the edge of a chute, and behind her, that ominous blue, Anspach's blue period, waiting to swallow her up forever. In the afternoon I picked up my daughter, Bridget, from her school, and we spent an hour at the corner library. When we got back home, Yvonne was there, standing at the kitchen counter, chopping something. Was she still mad at me from the morning? I went up beside her on the pretense of washing my hands. 'Day okay?' I said."

Nor is Martin fearful of giving her characters a philosophical voice wedged between ordinary dialog. In "The Open Book" Edith says,

"It all felt dismally familiar. They were at the middle point of an argument they had been through a thousand times: reason versus passion, vitality versus stability. Sometimes, when Isabel was so frustrated and stymied by her career that she became depressed and Edith had to buck her up, they had even switched sides. But this time a resolution of those irreconcilable differences would have to be found, for it was not just philosophies that were at odds but material possibilities."

I found myself in a pleasantly distracting daze contemplating each of these stories taking flight as finished novels, had Martin chosen the loftier form. She has some brutal plot twists in store here, but to those of us who have read Valerie Martin before, it's as the narrator in "The Unfinished Novel" says: "I was fixed between curiosity and foreboding, and stymied by the unsettling feeling of having done this before."

The writer came up with good plots, but unfortunately, the rest of her writing is lacking. The writing style is reminds me of the guy on Dragnet -- flat and dry -- "Just the facts." The writer advances too quickly, covering too much in each paragraph. The details (sight, sound, smell, and often feelings) are largely left out. I could not get into the characters because I just didn't have the feel of being there, like a do with a good book. What "feeling" there was to the book was a gritty, world-weary feeling that I didn't care to experience. Maybe goths would enjoy it, others can probably skip it and miss nothing.

These stories about writers and artists do not make the creative life sound attractive. Apart from rejected manuscripts and unsold paintings Martin's characters face many hazards. Even their cats are disaster-prone. As in her "Property" she seldom makes nice things happen to nice people. There are a lot of unpleasant deaths and one unhappy transmogrification. People jump out of windows, get trapped under cars, or die naturally and are found rotting. They inhabit New Orleans apartments without air conditioning in the summer or ones in Vermont without heat in the winter. "His Blue Period" was set in the same milieu as Tama Janowitz's wonderful "Slaves of New York."

I liked "Beethoven" and "The Open Door" best because, I think, the author eschews melodramatic devices and lets the action grow out of and define the character. She can be a witty and insightful writer when she lets cheerfulness creep in.