Book Twentyone: Ten Days in the Hills

Ten Days in the Hills, Jane Smiley



Have you ever had a book that was trying to kick your ass? I mean, it sucked so bad that you felt like it was actually defeating you? Well, my response to that kind of book is to fight back. I know, I know. The rational response should be to simply admit defeat, give up, and move on to another book. But I just can't help myself. I'm like Rocky. I feel like I just need to go the distance, even though I know I'm clearly outmatched. Simply put, this book is Apollo Creed and even though it bested me in the end, I'm the one at the top of the stairs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art pumping my fists in the air and punching sides of beef. Wait... what? I think that metaphor got away from me in the end.

Okay, so what's this book about? A bunch of characters gather in someone's house in the hills of LA (for ten days, duh), and some of them have strangely graphic but not-at-all erotic sex and then they all just talk and talk and talk and talk. When it was suggested by someone in our book club, I had hopes for something like The Anniversary Party. But no such luck. This quote, from the perspective of one of the characters (and I didn't even like this guy!), pretty much sums up how I felt about everyone in the book.

It was as if he had somehow embarked on a cruise, something he had avoided all his life, and suddenly here he was, far out in a sea of languor with a group of people who on land could be avoided, and were therefore fine enough, but here, on this cruise, were insufferable. He sighed. They made him sigh. It was not precisely that they were boring, but more that they caused the expansion of time, so that every second, every moment, swelled to infinity.