Detailed plot synopsis reviews of Truly Madly Guilty |
|---|
We learn that Holly pushed Ruby into the fountain and blames herself for almost drowning Ruby. Holly's grandma purposefully lies to her and tells Holly she is not to blame. Her Grandma realizes there is already way too much guilt shit in this really f'ed up neurotic family and more is simply not needed.
The End.
Literary Criticism:
This was a very dumb book. It comes with two "big" surprises:
1) That Clementine would feel obligated to hand over her eggs because Erika saved Ruby's life
and
2) That Harry the next door neighbor was the one to alert them to Ruby's drowning, and he died by accident as a result.
The first is not such a controversial secret that we should have had to wait 200 pages to find out what had happened. The second seemed only tangentially related to the story and didn't really seem to affect any of the main characters.
Click here to see the rest of this reviewGenerally speaking, stories written around the idea of "Something scandalous has happened, I'm going to tease you for 200 pages repeatedly about it, and only then will I reveal it" are quite boring. Artificial suspense is a poor substitute for a naturally compelling plot. But even worse, these reveals were not particularly scandalous. They didn't involve sex, or infidelity, or morally questionable acts. I basically shrugged my shoulders and said to myself, "Oh, is that all?" when I found out.
Actually, when I saw that nothing was happening in this book from page one, I skipped the first 80 pages. When I tuned back in, it turned out that I missed absolutely nothing. That's not the mark of a well written book.
If Moriarty had wanted to create a more compelling story, she had three couples to play with. There could have been affairs and/or wife swapping, jealous husbands finding out about infidelity and/or having affairs of their own. There was none of that here.
Tiffany used to be a stripper who boned a customer. Vid doesn't care. So what's the point?
Erika's mom is a hoarder. Ok, so we know that. What's the point?
A guy next door totally unconnected to any of the main characters dies on his own. Ok, so what's the point?
This was a very dumb book.
