LaCava's
I Fear My Pain Interests You did not get much better. The narrator, Margot, is uninteresting, uninterested in her own life, and cool with those around her. The french word
ressasser is used 4, maybe 5, times. It felt pretentious and lazy. She fakes a bad essay to avoid going to Brown University (her family name is one of the campus auditoriums) and—oh! the woe!—is accepted. She indulges in that very teenage humblebrag of rebellion anecdotes, being expelled from schools etc, deliberately underachieving etc. Margot is the daughter of a famous actress and a rockstar. Being recognised is a worry. She also cannot feel physical pain. She is an actress. She fucks a director and recognises a South American author he is reading for his next film because she wrote a book review when she 'needed money'... yeah..... right..... There are terrible icy non-sequitur dialogues, like DeLillo except nothing is happening in the world, profundity folds into inanity. She gets into a strange man's pick up truck in rural Montana because 'it's more interesting than Benadryl'. Seriously? That glib. Later, when flirting she writes '—such opportune timing, Mr. Graves.' Retching at this nudge wink indelicacy. Please. She talks about her naked body (a lot), her thin legs (she wasn't eating), she talks about her clothes a lot, telling us about her lace underwear. Non-plussed, hun.
@jenks , I want you to read this.
Margot gets a taxi from the airport and comments on the driver:
'Either way, she was repelled by how ostentatious or debased I was, sitting there in her backseat. As if all of it was communicable through the space of the car. I was the city descending, with my clothes, systems, ideas. She didn't want to chat. But when she did it was as if she'd been holding it inside for too long.'
I persevered with this, but it still feels like a hollow gimmick.