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A review by mx_malaprop
Anna of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett
1.0
If you let bad people push you around into doing bad things because you're too chickenhearted to stand up for yourself, up to the point where you, vulture-like, with zero scruples, and right in front of his face, scope out someone's house that he can no longer afford to live in after his father committed suicide partly because your family contributed to his ruin, with a mind to buy it and live there yourself after he's been driven out, then guess what? YOU TOO ARE A BAD PERSON, and I don't see why I should be bothered about you as a character!!
(Yes, I should allow for nuance &c. and acknowledge that it's not so much that people are "bad people" or "good people" but that people are complex and sometimes do bad things and sometimes do good things, but this novel wasn't exactly rife with nuance, so I don't feel like being generous towards it.)
(Still better than Howards End though!)
EDIT: It's not as if a character has to be likeable or sympathetic in order for me to care about what happens to them or to find a novel worthwhile. But if Bennett wanted to tell a "frog of a character finds herself in a Bunsen burner of moral squalor" story, then he should have been more purposeful about it - or just left that kind of thing to Edith Wharton, who can pull it off much better. Stick to the comedy, bro.
And I'm just over men writing these wilting-lily women characters who don't know their own mind and let men walk all over them and think for them.
(Yes, I should allow for nuance &c. and acknowledge that it's not so much that people are "bad people" or "good people" but that people are complex and sometimes do bad things and sometimes do good things, but this novel wasn't exactly rife with nuance, so I don't feel like being generous towards it.)
(Still better than Howards End though!)
EDIT: It's not as if a character has to be likeable or sympathetic in order for me to care about what happens to them or to find a novel worthwhile. But if Bennett wanted to tell a "frog of a character finds herself in a Bunsen burner of moral squalor" story, then he should have been more purposeful about it - or just left that kind of thing to Edith Wharton, who can pull it off much better. Stick to the comedy, bro.
And I'm just over men writing these wilting-lily women characters who don't know their own mind and let men walk all over them and think for them.