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Woke Up Lonely A Novel Fiona Maazel 9781555976385 Books

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Woke Up Lonely A Novel Fiona Maazel 9781555976385 Books

I have mixed feelings about this novel. The premise is good: a cult leader, an ex-wife in American intelligence, 4 lonely, lost people looking for promise in a dismal world. The characters are interesting. And in many ways the story worked well for me. I like stories with flawed characters and the hope of redemption. But the writer is in love with her knowledge of the vocabulary, to the point where my Webster's Collegiate Dictionary could not identify nor define many of the terms she uses. In addition, the plot jumps about with little or no transitions from one subplot to another. Each of those jumps is hard to follow.


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Woke Up Lonely A Novel Fiona Maazel 9781555976385 Books Reviews

This is one of the worst books I've read in quite sometime. I did not like the writing style at all. I had a hard time following the story. Used the dictionary throughout
Read this because it was highly reviewed--thought it was hard to follow and understand. The ending was not fulfilling. Disappointed
I'm an avid reader but I could not get into this novel and I tried more
than once.I don't get the glowing review in Vanity Fair at all. (That's
why I bought it.) Also annoying is the fact the edition does
not have pages. (I should have checked first) I just deleted this.
Woke Up Lonely is a worthy follow-up to Maazel's brilliant 2008 debut, Last Last Chance.
Here, as in Last Last Chance, Maazel's immense skill at drawing and grounding her characters allows her to stretch the bounds of the situational to, and well beyond, the breaking point without losing the reader along the way.

Because of the way in which her plots deal with (among other things) the devastation of a SARS-like pandemic and a Waco-like (but far larger) cult with far too intimate ties to the rogue nuclear state of North Korea, it could be inferred that Maazel does not have great hope for the survival of our species. And yet her confident and commanding prose is full of life and, while no gag-fest, has moments of genuine humor. And each novel ends on a note of tenuous hope.

Maazel is a satirist of the first order and an absurdist but not, ultimately, a comic writer (as she is often described) - because she continues to care. The deep pleasure - the relief - of comedy is admitting that you've given up, even if you continue to act like you haven't.

Maazel's Global catastrophes play out against, and are firmly grounded in, the context of fiercely dysfunctional and equally fiercely indestructible families, and family life is her ultimate subject - the ultimate beauty and horror of the nuclear family.

(The nation of North Korea, presided over in this book by the now late Kim Jong-il -- the ultimate abusive father -- can be seen as the global paradigm of the dysfunctional family, with predictably tragic results not only for its "children" - the Citizens of that country - but for the other families of the world as well. Like SARS, abuse is a virus).
The story is good, but it seems to take a lot of liberties with what readers will accept as credible. Maazel's prose is the funnest thing about the novel. Its funny and fresh, although here she takes liberties, too, using words in unconventional context and sometimes its totally inaccessible.

The plot is more digressive than I prefer.
I cannot resist an organization whose charter is bringing the lonely together. The Helix is the political child of thurlow Dan who mesmerizes his followers into pursuing connection to each other, settling them in communes of relationship. He is pursued by his ex - wife Esme from the Department of the Interior who in fact tries to protect him from her position of power.

So the writing is wry, sarcastic, and sincere. I admit I spent the first portion of the book fighting the tonal change and doing a bit of confusion keeping track of the characters. One only has to surrender to the writing as it flows. For the world is full of the lonely, and frankly identifying them as a political group is a bit of genius in set up. Read the book and see what you think.
Not usually my cup of tea, but the positive reviews intrigued me. I'm glad they did. It took a bit to get into but worth it. A new take on the human condition, it is irreverent not knee-slapping hilarious. The characters are fully developed. Vocabulary not a problem.
If you'd enjoy serious, kookie, fun, depressing, hopeful and clever, get this novel.
I have mixed feelings about this novel. The premise is good a cult leader, an ex-wife in American intelligence, 4 lonely, lost people looking for promise in a dismal world. The characters are interesting. And in many ways the story worked well for me. I like stories with flawed characters and the hope of redemption. But the writer is in love with her knowledge of the vocabulary, to the point where my Webster's Collegiate Dictionary could not identify nor define many of the terms she uses. In addition, the plot jumps about with little or no transitions from one subplot to another. Each of those jumps is hard to follow.