N. M. D.'s Reviews > Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll

Two exes with a rocky past reunite in a plot to have an old movie scarlet pretend to be a rich woman who'd recently died. Their effort to keep her money-grubbing kids from ruining the house and property she loved becomes more and more complicated. 

Though I vastly prefer characters to plot, I'm not accustomed to 90% characters and 10% plot. It's like literary fiction, except for the sex. There is constant mentioning of sex. Thinking about sex, reminiscing about it, sizing people up, talking about it. Despite that erotica tone, there is only one really explicit sex scene. Everything else is quick or past tense memories. The two leads are outrageously promiscuous, and it's delivered in a very blunt and clinical way, something like: "I once bumped into a random guy on a train. As I gave him a hand job in the backseat, he told me...." This sort of thing is constant, and always distant and detached.

At one point, the narrator, whose been in his feelings, stumbles on his ex just banging someone else on the beach. The copulating pair both see him, he stands there and watches them, and then there's some casual talking afterwards. The blunt approach to sex eventually made me feel a numbness I didn't enjoy at all.

So you wouldn't think I'd describe a book like that as boring, but thats what it was. Boring. No one does anything. There'll be a line of dialogue, a small movement or gesture, and then three paragraphs of introspection. Characters sit around, eat, talk, walk, swim, and think, think ,think. I don't need an explosion on every page, but there's zero tension. They're all committing fraud but none of them seem overly concerned, and the occasional kink in their plan (between talking and eating and walking and lounging) is quickly resolved. They aren't worried, and neither was I.

I will say, these are the most multi-faceted and fleshed-out characters I've ever read. They feel like real people. But that wasn't great for me either. I don't like real people. I don't like their complexities and their moral ambiguity. I read fiction to escape the layers real people have.

I can't say this book was bad, but I have no idea who the audience is. It sure wasn't me.