Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan

 

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

275 pages

Book Club Read / Part of The Art of Reading Book Club with Colm Tóbín

 

Blurb

 

When you leave Ireland aged 22 to spend your parents’ money, it’s called a gap year. When Ava leaves Ireland aged 22 to make her own money, she’d not sure what to call it, but it involves:

• A badly-paid job in Hong Kong, teaching English grammar to rich children;
• Julian, who likes to spend money on Ava and lets her move into his guest room;
• Edith, who Ava meets while Julian is out of town and actually listens to her when she talks;
• Money, love, cynicism, unspoken feelings and unlikely connections

Exciting times ensue.

 

Review

I may have gone into this book a little prejudiced. My daughter warned me I probably wouldn’t like it. As much as I would have loved for her to be wrong, I’m afraid she knows me very well and was spot on. It appears that Colm Toibin and I are not on the same page when it comes to preferred fiction…at all.

I didn’t like Ava. I know young people (myself included at that time) can be rather self-obsessed, but I found Ava particularly selfish. Everything is about her and if she does consider others, i.e. Julian and Edith, it is mostly in terms of how they relate to her, how they affect or improve her life. Sure, towards the end of the book she does appear to go on a bit of a journey and seems to gain some insight into how her actions and lack thereof affect Edith, but for me it was too little too late. What’s more, if I had been Edith, I would have told her as much and moved on…fast.

Despite what Ava continuously tells herself and the reader, I couldn’t help feeling that Julian was her victim too. Surely the fact that he does ask her to move to Hamburg with him indicates that he is more attached to her than he has been willing to admit. Surely her initial agreement followed by her last moment change of mind means that she now inflicts the same level of hurt on him as she inflicted on Edith earlier in the story? Does she even let him know she’s changed her mind about following him?

To be fair, I didn’t have a hard time reading this book and I wasn’t tempted to not finish it at any time. On the other hand, I found it impossible to connect to any of the three main characters. I never figured out why they were attracted to each other or what they got out of sharing time (and bodies). While Ava’s motivation seems obvious that is only true when it comes to her finding a luxurious roof over her head without having to part with money. What either Julian or Edith gets out of being with Ava never became clear to me.

A few notes I took while reading:

• I wonder if this book is (somewhat) pretentious, or if that’s ‘just’ me?
• Is it me or is Ava rather pathetic in her neediness? Sure, she’s young (23) but is that an excuse for her using Julian and/or allowing Julian to use her?
• Why is she attracted to Edith?
• On page 149 I came across an observation Edith makes about Ava that feels rather apt:

 

“You keep describing yourself as this uniquely damaged person, when a lot of it is completely normal. I think you want to feel special—which is fair, who doesn’t—but you don’t allow yourself to feel special in a good way, so you tell yourself you’re especially bad.”

 To me that sounds like just more self-indulgence. If she tells herself she’s bad, she doesn’t have to take a close(r) look at why she acts the way she does.

• It would help if I understood why both Julian and Edith want Ava in their lives. Nothing in her narrative makes her attractive in my eyes.
• It’s funny how, in a book written from a first-person perspective, I never felt as if I got the know Ava. Mind you, Julian and Edith, as seen and described by Ava, weren’t any clearer.
• Conclusion: MEH! 

Maybe it is time for me to admit that (some) of the upcoming Irish writers are just not telling stories aimed at me. On the other hand, maybe I have to consider that I may be missing something when I’m reading books like this one. The long and short of it is that while this book was easy enough to read and the story enough of a trainwreck to keep my attention, I’m not overly impressed. ‘Exciting’ is not the term I would choose to describe the times in this story. For me ‘desperate’ would have been a more appropriate term.