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jrmarr's review against another edition
3.0
A well-written book, but one with such an unlikeable central character I struggled to care about what happened. Ultimately unsatisfying.
hollowistheworld's review against another edition
The only reason I even made it as long as I did is because I was looking for another book to use for the Sri Lanka prompt. 20 minutes in and the three female characters mentioned are already Saintified Mother (nameless, of course), Pushy Whore (every time we mention this character she's talking about her secondary sex organs), and Dumb Love Interest (POV character clearly only likes her because she's too stupid to argue with him but also judges her for it). I don't care if it becomes the greatest subversion of these tropes ever after the first 30 minutes, I'm trying to purge this from my memory. And making a formal note - I HATE literary novels.
rojaed's review
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
gbatts's review
1.0
This would have worked more for me as a short story. I enjoyed the first chapter, I found the observations bang-on and wickedly funny but then the novel went nowhere. If there was a more interesting and dimensional protagonist, it wouldn't have needed to be written as a multi-character perspective. The other characters were never developed, the book was just different people telling me the same thing about a shallow person.
It was weird that Pippa was some sort of crack for old lesbians. Why were the lesbians so lonely? It seems like a trope. In general there was a vibe of "I'm not racist/ homophobic/ misogynist/ xenophobic, I hate everyone!!" When you're writing a social satire where the characters who are betrayed in the best light are the white males, you wonder what you are adding to the contemporary discourse.
Some other problems: It needed light moments among the "satire" to avoid coming across as petulant. The consistent referral to things mattering or being of importance adds an air of intellectual snobbery. De Kretser seems to think she has a superhuman power for observation. It's more of a superhuman appreciation for the mundane. She probably found the plastic bag scene in American Beauty really profound. These dull observations were also nauseatingly over-written - I worked in Sydney harbour for 4 years and never once noticed that the sky "pealed with blue" or the water "fizzled with a slavish blue." Hilary Mantel she is not.
Their Brilliant Careers worked far better as a satire of the Australian culture and literary scene.
It was weird that Pippa was some sort of crack for old lesbians. Why were the lesbians so lonely? It seems like a trope. In general there was a vibe of "I'm not racist/ homophobic/ misogynist/ xenophobic, I hate everyone!!" When you're writing a social satire where the characters who are betrayed in the best light are the white males, you wonder what you are adding to the contemporary discourse.
Some other problems: It needed light moments among the "satire" to avoid coming across as petulant. The consistent referral to things mattering or being of importance adds an air of intellectual snobbery. De Kretser seems to think she has a superhuman power for observation. It's more of a superhuman appreciation for the mundane. She probably found the plastic bag scene in American Beauty really profound. These dull observations were also nauseatingly over-written - I worked in Sydney harbour for 4 years and never once noticed that the sky "pealed with blue" or the water "fizzled with a slavish blue." Hilary Mantel she is not.
Their Brilliant Careers worked far better as a satire of the Australian culture and literary scene.
essjay1's review
4.0
4.5 stars. This book is beautifully written and I liked the structure which was 5 stories linked by the character of Pippa at different phases of her life. Pippa comes across as a bit of a self indulgent narcissist - one of those toxic “friends” that we all run into at some point, although toward the end there are hints to how she may have become this way.
All the characters are sharply drawn, although my favourite is probably Christabel in the final story. And Céleste is also a great character.
I can see why some people might find this book irritating but anyone who is interested in people will enjoy the observations on human nature if nothing else.
This is a book you could read again in ten years and still enjoy.
All the characters are sharply drawn, although my favourite is probably Christabel in the final story. And Céleste is also a great character.
I can see why some people might find this book irritating but anyone who is interested in people will enjoy the observations on human nature if nothing else.
This is a book you could read again in ten years and still enjoy.
rachhenderson's review
2.0
The blurb on the back doesn't explain that this book is actually five separate stories (I use the word loosely) with one common character across all five and a few others who appear in two or more. "Stories" isn't quite the right word, because something should happen in a story, but nothing much did in this book. I know it's about the writing but it didn't do it for me. There was one sentence I really liked, comparing a dog's love to god's (expecting the dog to love you more than anyone else is unreasonable) but I was otherwise unmoved. Lots of people write about how unlikeable Pippa is, and she was especially unlikeable in the fifth story (do we trust the narrator?) but her own story, the fourth one, was the only one that I didn't really struggle through.
caramay's review
DNF @ 56%
No story or plot; no flow/ felt stilted and disjointed - like one section of the book had nothing to do with the next (or previous) sections.
Was left wondering: What was the point of this book up until I DNF’d?
Can/could easily go a day or two (or more) without picking it up.
If this book was meant to be a “character study” or whatever that means, it could have done so in half the length.
Don’t trust the blurb, it seems misleading to me.
No story or plot; no flow/ felt stilted and disjointed - like one section of the book had nothing to do with the next (or previous) sections.
Was left wondering: What was the point of this book up until I DNF’d?
Can/could easily go a day or two (or more) without picking it up.
If this book was meant to be a “character study” or whatever that means, it could have done so in half the length.
Don’t trust the blurb, it seems misleading to me.
clare__emm's review
1.0
Found myself looking for excuses to avoid continuing with this book, so cutting my losses. Not for me, nor, I should think, anyone not embedded in the ozlit world/not from Sydney.
tazzle_dazzle's review
3.0
I can see why this is award winning fiction but it didn’t capture my mind or heart.
lyndajdickson's review against another edition
3.0
The Life to Come is less a novel and more a collection of five short stories that intertwine and overlap, featuring appearances or mentions of characters met elsewhere, all linked by the central character Pippa.
“The Fictive Self”, set in Sydney, tells the story of George, an aspiring author. He meets Pippa in university. “Pippa had been in his tutorial on ‘The Fictive Self’: a Pass student whose effortful work George had pitied enough to bump up to a Credit at the last moment.” We find out more about the writing careers of both George and Pippa as the book progresses.
“The Ashfield Tamil”, also set in Sydney, centers on Cassie, who is “writing a thesis on Australian expatriate novelists”, and her Sri Lankan born boyfriend Ash. Cassie went to school with Pippa, and they are still in touch.
“The Museum of Romantic Life”, set in Paris, introduces us to Celeste, a translator who meets Pippa at an exhibition at the Australian Embassy during the period when Pippa starts writing a new novel set in Paris.
In “Pippa Passes”, we finally get the story from Pippa’s point of view.
This is as far as I got (67% of the way in) when Book Club met. I really wanted to like this book but, if I hadn’t been reading it for Book Club, I would have given up much earlier. Pippa, who is the linking character, is an acquired taste, a do-gooder who butts into everyone’s business. There are numerous other characters, each with no redeeming features. I didn’t care what happened to any of them, and nothing happens anyway, which makes it hard to continue reading. In addition, the author has the annoying tendency of introducing characters and only naming them later, making the narrative hard to follow. She also tries too hard to be “literary” and, as a result, suffers from the same maladies she makes fun of:
“… the meaning of each word was clear and the meaning of sentences baffled. Insignificant yet crucial words like ‘however’ and ‘which’—words whose meaning was surely beyond dispute—had been deployed in ways that made no sense.”
“George detected a borrowing: Pippa had come across the word somewhere and been impressed.”
That being said, there are some great descriptive passages, with the author having a particular fondness of anthropomorphizing the scenery:
“Brick bungalows cowered at the base of the cliff and skulked on the ridge above—it seemed an affront for which they would all be punished.”
She also makes astute observations on
Australian literature: “After some difficulty, a professor who would admit to having once read an Australian novel was found.”,
the media: “… the national broadcaster—a viper’s nest of socialists, tree-huggers and ugly, barren females—had seized on the survey, exhuming one of its bleeding-heart ideologues to moan about funding cuts to education.”,
politics: “Education being a trivial portfolio, the minister, a golden boy, had also been entrusted with Immigration.”,
race: “He was a Jaffna Tamil, he said. ‘But here no one knows who we are. What to do?’ Cassie was familiar with this kind of thing. Her grandmother had grown up in Vienna, and laments about Australian ignorance circulated readily with the torte.”,
character: “People often remarked that Pippa and Cassie were like sisters. That was quite true in the sense that each girl kept track of, rejected and coveted whatever belonged to the other.”,
Australians: “Australians are hard-working and very successful. They are suspicious of their success and resent it. They are winners who prefer to see themselves as victims. Their national hero, Ned Kelly, was a violent criminal—they take this as proof of their egalitarianism. They worship money, of course.”,
and the passage of time (these last quotes linking back to the book’s title):
“What was coming was a life in which his father was a stranger.”
“… when Ash thought of Australia it seemed to belong less to his past than to a time to come, luminous and open-ended.”
“Australians are ashamed of the past. You have no choice but to look forward.”
“Pippa, looking forward, saw a life that had drained away in the service of novels no one wanted to read.”
Warnings: coarse language, sexual references.
“The Fictive Self”, set in Sydney, tells the story of George, an aspiring author. He meets Pippa in university. “Pippa had been in his tutorial on ‘The Fictive Self’: a Pass student whose effortful work George had pitied enough to bump up to a Credit at the last moment.” We find out more about the writing careers of both George and Pippa as the book progresses.
“The Ashfield Tamil”, also set in Sydney, centers on Cassie, who is “writing a thesis on Australian expatriate novelists”, and her Sri Lankan born boyfriend Ash. Cassie went to school with Pippa, and they are still in touch.
“The Museum of Romantic Life”, set in Paris, introduces us to Celeste, a translator who meets Pippa at an exhibition at the Australian Embassy during the period when Pippa starts writing a new novel set in Paris.
In “Pippa Passes”, we finally get the story from Pippa’s point of view.
This is as far as I got (67% of the way in) when Book Club met. I really wanted to like this book but, if I hadn’t been reading it for Book Club, I would have given up much earlier. Pippa, who is the linking character, is an acquired taste, a do-gooder who butts into everyone’s business. There are numerous other characters, each with no redeeming features. I didn’t care what happened to any of them, and nothing happens anyway, which makes it hard to continue reading. In addition, the author has the annoying tendency of introducing characters and only naming them later, making the narrative hard to follow. She also tries too hard to be “literary” and, as a result, suffers from the same maladies she makes fun of:
“… the meaning of each word was clear and the meaning of sentences baffled. Insignificant yet crucial words like ‘however’ and ‘which’—words whose meaning was surely beyond dispute—had been deployed in ways that made no sense.”
“George detected a borrowing: Pippa had come across the word somewhere and been impressed.”
That being said, there are some great descriptive passages, with the author having a particular fondness of anthropomorphizing the scenery:
“Brick bungalows cowered at the base of the cliff and skulked on the ridge above—it seemed an affront for which they would all be punished.”
She also makes astute observations on
Australian literature: “After some difficulty, a professor who would admit to having once read an Australian novel was found.”,
the media: “… the national broadcaster—a viper’s nest of socialists, tree-huggers and ugly, barren females—had seized on the survey, exhuming one of its bleeding-heart ideologues to moan about funding cuts to education.”,
politics: “Education being a trivial portfolio, the minister, a golden boy, had also been entrusted with Immigration.”,
race: “He was a Jaffna Tamil, he said. ‘But here no one knows who we are. What to do?’ Cassie was familiar with this kind of thing. Her grandmother had grown up in Vienna, and laments about Australian ignorance circulated readily with the torte.”,
character: “People often remarked that Pippa and Cassie were like sisters. That was quite true in the sense that each girl kept track of, rejected and coveted whatever belonged to the other.”,
Australians: “Australians are hard-working and very successful. They are suspicious of their success and resent it. They are winners who prefer to see themselves as victims. Their national hero, Ned Kelly, was a violent criminal—they take this as proof of their egalitarianism. They worship money, of course.”,
and the passage of time (these last quotes linking back to the book’s title):
“What was coming was a life in which his father was a stranger.”
“… when Ash thought of Australia it seemed to belong less to his past than to a time to come, luminous and open-ended.”
“Australians are ashamed of the past. You have no choice but to look forward.”
“Pippa, looking forward, saw a life that had drained away in the service of novels no one wanted to read.”
Warnings: coarse language, sexual references.