2012 Challenges, Books

Book 101: Two Serious Ladies – Jane Bowles

This is one of those rare novels that I just couldn’t like. A quote from the back synopsis states “This story of two stated women ‘going to pieces’ in their eccentric, disjointed ways has the hallucinatory power of an unavoidable dream.” What it doesn’t mention is that it’s more of an unavoidable bad dream than just a dream.

Overall, it seemed well written and it had plenty of humor, but I just couldn’t make myself like the characters or their situations. And I really wanted to like it when about half way through I found out that the author was good friends with Carson McCullers and Tennessee Williams, both of whom I love and truly brought Southern Gothic to life. It also didn’t help I kept wondering when the drag queens would show up based on the front cover.

Thankfully it was a short novel (only 200 pages), but I do feel bad because my boss gave this to me way back in September to read. I’m glad I didn’t read the back cover or I probably would’ve avoided it even longer, or just not read it! However, it does count towards my 2012 Mount TBR Reading Challenge, bumping that challenge up to 8/25 so YAY for that!

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