This might be showing my bias, but I think it does this novel a disservice that the audiobook is read by Tom Hanks, precisely because it seems like such a Tom Hanks-y kind of book. And look, I recognize that Tom Hanks doesn’t always play aw shucks kinds of guys in Forrest Gump kinds of movies. But he does so enough that it makes it very hard not to experience this novel as a heartfelt and slightly idealized tale of Americana. But I think it’s doing something a bit more nuanced and interesting — and I guess I could grant you that perhaps this is actually exactly why Tom Hanks is the perfect narrator for it, because he plays into the facade so perfectly, while also having the range to accommodate the complexity. I dunno. I guess I feel guilty for my inclination to slot both Hanks and this novel into the category of amiable middlebrowness, because it’s not entirely fair to either. And yet…
This novel seems often like a fairly straightforward story of growing up, told by a boy whose wealthy father marries a shrewd and opportunistic second wife then dies unexpectedly, leaving the son (and his sister) to fend for themselves. But there are more than a few twists and turns where the book surprises you, and demands that you reconsider the assumptions that grounded the way you only semi-consciously filled in the blank spaces of the characters, and question the perspectives you’d unthinkingly accepted. I admired that about it — it’s an effect of a sudden glimpse into unsuspected depths, the kind of thing where you realize that the book you’ve been reading is a lot more interesting than you’d thought. And yet, this effect is also one that sort of requires that much of the book… not seem that interesting or complex. Not that it’s bad, or even boring, but that for this shift to work most dazzlingly, you have to spend a lot of time mistakenly apprehending it as simplistic. Which makes it a fairly undemanding read, often, but also, for me at least, a somewhat less exciting one.
Kasia Reads 