Customer Reviews

The Sentimentalists

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

The publicity this book has received, and the fact that it is award winning, reminds me of the accolades received by many academy award winning movies. It is evident that literary scholars find this book a wonderful read. As an individual who reads books for entertainment, I found this book to be slow and without flow. Half way into the book I found myself reading the back cover to ensure that I had purchased the book whose description I had read - the synopsis on the back sounds very intriguing, but the book seemed aimless. Again, this may be because I am just a `lay person' and as such am unable to fully appreciate the author's literary genius. Similar to leaving some Oscar award winning movies, after completing this book I am left asking myself what all the fuss is about.

I was anxious to read this book, mostly because of the Giller prize but also because the author is originally from the Maritimes. As well, I liked the backstory with Gaspereau Press (how they negotiated with other publishers to make more copies of the book available without sacrificing their principles too much). I was a bit disappointed with the book itself though, but maybe it's only because I was expecting too much. The writing style was like some poetry I've read: precise (excessively?), analytical, and a bit choppy, with contorted sentences. Lots of clauses, commas and dashes, but instead of assisting the story it felt like the author was perhaps trying too hard (maybe that was the point, and I just missed it?). On the other hand, the author exhibits real awareness and insight regarding the psychology of the characters and their relations with each other.
With respect to the novel's overall plot, I've read reviews where the reviewer praised the slow build to a big finish, but that wasn't my impression. The father's experiences in Vietnam are descibed in such vague terms (deliberately, of course) that it isn't really clear what took place or how these events subsequently influenced the rest of his life. That's not necessarily bad, as it does say something interesting about the nature of memory and about how we construct a narrative after something happens that may be linked to "what really happened" only indirectly. And about how hard a person's life is to figure out, let alone to describe in a novel. I just don't know how successfully this strategy was used in The Sentimentalists.
Overall, not a bad book at all, but I think the fact that it was awarded the Giller might say more about the people who made up the jury this year than it does about the book itself.

The Sentamentalists: I only managed to get about 1/4 through this book before giving up. If an author can't capture my attention in the first part, then the book has a problem. I found the book boring and mundane, and the style of writing irritated me so much that my attention to the story was lost. The paragraphs are long, with misplaced phrases and abundant commas. I found this so distacting that I started looking for these commas and phrases instead of paying attention to the story which was not captivating in the least.

Perhaps her writing style is just not my cup of tea.. I couldn't even finish the book. Like many others, I'm surprised it won the Giller,...
maybe I was expecting too much? I don't know...I find the story just didn't flow well...sentences were wayyyyyyyyy too long.
It felt like this (example): "so we went into the kitchen - which my father had built back in 1951 with some wood he had found at the bottom of a lake we used to always bathe in in the summer - and the heat from the sun had melted all the chocolate on the new oak table - which i assumed he left there on purpose - and I was wondering if my mother would find out, would she finally divorce him? " WHAT? I found myself loosing focus way too often to the
point where I just gave up.
Not to mention the NUMEROUS punctuation mistakes and grammar errors. Someone told me the publishing house ran out of stock so they had to rush
to get more printed...not sure if it's true, but it would explain the punctuation and grammar errors, but still...not excusable.

Johanna Skibsrud is a 30-year-old Montreal writer, who is currently completing her PhD at l'Université de Montréal. She now also has the distinction of being the youngest author ever to have won Canada's most prestigious literary award, the Giller Prize.

An early version of this novel served as Ms. Skibsrud's Master's dissertation at Concordia University.

The Sentimentalists is written in an oneiric, poetic style with nuances of emotion that belie the author's young age. The troubling subject matter, gradually uncovered with archeological patience, is based in part on the Vietnam War experiences of Johanna's own deceased father.

The novel opens in the Fargo, North Dakota trailer home of Napoleon Haskell, a Vietnam veteran. A rambling home, because Napoleon, a carpenter, has made numerous additions over the years:

"At the end of the corridor was the room my father referred to as the `second library' - the `first' having reach its limits years before. My father was a great reader and a great rememberer of things, though he never remembered anything in the right order, or entirely, and always had just little bits of all the books and poems he'd ever read floating around in his mind."

As his health deteriorates, Napoleon's daughters move him from his trailer to the town of Casablanca, Ontario, to live out his twilight years with Henry, the father of Napoleon's deceased brother-in-arms Owen.

There, after gradually opening up to his daughter about his own fragmented memories of Vietnam, Napoleon succumbs to lung cancer:

"In the same way, I suppose, that for the drowning man there comes, though several times he raises himself above the surface, the irrefutable moment in which it is certain that he will not raise himself again, and the last bubbles of his final exhalations arise and disperse, and an invisible seal is drawn across the waves... we gave him up."

Explaining the origins of the book, Skibsrud has said "The real beginning of this story was a summer I spent working on Flagstaff Lake (in Maine)... That fall, with the beginning of a story in my head, my father began to speak for the first time about his experiences in the Vietnam War. I am still not sure exactly why he told me his story when he did, but I think it had to do - it was 2003 then - with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which had been for some time stirring in him a deep anger toward a government willing to repeat the mistakes of the past at the expense of innocent people; soldiers as well as civilians."

Though the story recounted is fascinating, the real strength of this book is the accomplished writing. Michael Enright, a member of the Giller jury said "I read it twice, and it's amazing even the second time, and I think it would be even more amazing the third time."

While reading this book I was totally bored and not sure I
could make my way to the end. However, I did manage
to finish it but couldn't make heads or tails of it.

There was not much of a storyline and I feel cheated
out of my time and dollars.

I cannot for the life of me understand how this book, The Sentimentalists,
could win such a prestigious award as the Giller Prize. I sometimes wonder
if the big prizes should be eliminated for young writers, until more writing
experience is acquired. It's just a thought.

To Johanna Skibsrud, I say PLEASE try to please the readers and not your
colleagues. We, the Readers, want to be entertained and not bored. We love
to read.

This debut novel, a sombre story of the unreliability of memory and the emotional ghosts of war won its author the prestigious Scotianbank Giller Prize in 2010.

Skibsrub's background as a poet stands out immediately. The prose is heavy in precision, mainly focussing on words and turns of phrases and less on the action and character development. In my humble opinion this book is overwritten, it is composed with an astounding play on words and over use of adjectives that may be appealing to some but not all.

The novel is narrated by an unnamed person who returns to stay with her father, a Vietnam War veteran. She recalls her father's life in a meandering voice that moves between the present and the past and shifts rather awkwardly between Fargo, ND and Casablanca, Ontario and the battlefields of Vietnam.

The first half of the book was so tedious it fast became boring and I simply lost interest, only 200 pages and I couldn't stick with it till the end ...Something I rarely do...So in all fairness I leave others to be the judge.

Similar to other reviewers, I was challenged to finish this book. I laughed at one review, wherein the reader had to check the back cover just to make sure they were reading the same story - I had to do the exact same thing. The number of commas in this book are astounding and prevent any enjoyment of the material. Further, this book is positioned improperly. It should be only pitched as a strained relationship between a daughter and her father. The 'war story' aspect, is totally lacking.

I tried, I really did. I started this book 4 times and find this an easy book to put down and keep down. Very confusing and disjointed.

Had I paid more attention to the reviews at this site rather than being influenced by the fact that the book won a Giller prize I would not have bothered to read it. I managed to make it through the first chapter before giving up. I found myself paying more attention to the number of commas per page than to the content. The record was 37, 10 in one sentence.