Official Review: Stranded in Sunshine by Eric Henderson
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powderblue
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Official Review: Stranded in Sunshine by Eric Henderson
[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Stranded in Sunshine" by Eric Henderson.]
3 out of 4 stars
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One shopping Mall, twelve people, five years. This is the basic premise driving "A Better Place", the name the optimistic characters embarking in a brand new utopia give their world in Eric Henderson's new novel Stranded in Sunshine. After one of the characters becomes very rich by investing in the stock market, she decides to purchase a small shopping mall and calls some of her old friends and acquaintances. The idea is simple and strangely seductive: To re-build society inside this protected environment, giving up (some) modern day comforts, technology and money. Each participant will take care of a store. And since the stores are still fully stocked, they will trade, exchange, and deal however they see fit. By the end of a five-year period, they will have, hopefully, become much better people than they were and will have built a healthier and happier society.
As readers, we are treated to the quirky and fascinating series of situations the characters put themselves in, pretty much as soon as they arrive at A Better Place. The novel is extremely fast-paced and it sometimes seems as if it moved with the goofy speed of silent movies. And, it is every bit as funny and bizarre as most silent movies are when we watch them today. Each chapter is written in the first person by one of the characters, which allows us to get access to their points of view, feelings and thoughts about the events as they develop. The use of the first person, present tense, for the narration gives us a sense of immediacy in the events, and it brilliantly achieves a feeling of "being there": the illusion of being present as the actions unfold is very clear and it is probably why this book is so easy to read and so difficult to put down.
The other main reason why this book is so hard to leave is simply because it's so much fun! Mixture of sitcom, soap opera, satire and dark comedy, it never fails to be engaging, and it never stops throwing curve balls at the reader. The first person narration, again, helps a lot in building surprise: as we always only know partial "slices" of reality, and as we only see the characters biased by their perceptions and opinions on themselves and others, we never fully know what to expect of them, how they are going to react, what they are going to do under certain circumstances. For the most part, the result is refreshing and insightful. Other times, though, it just doesn't work too well.
Probably because of the relatively short length of the book, especially taking into account that most of the 12 characters play an important role to the plot, at some points I was left off with the feeling that the characters were not fully developed. There's very little back story to them, we don't even know how old they are (we know that most of them seem to be in their late 20s, early 30s, but that's just speculation on my part), we know too little about their true motivations for being there and, with a few exceptions, we almost know nothing of their current feelings and emotions. I found the female characters were even more one-dimensional in that respect. I think if we knew more of them, many of their actions and decisions would seem a lot less whimsical and arbitrary, a bit less selfish, perhaps.
The other thing I had quite an issue with, and it kept on bothering me the whole time, was that it was extremely difficult for me to buy into the proposed setting of reality. The main idea, that someone has made a lot of money and decides to buy a shopping mall is fairly easy to accept. Now, I can't think of any good reason why each individual shop would leave their stores fully stocked. I could probably accept that maybe the furniture, electronics or clothes shops might make a deal and leave their products. Food stores? Not too likely, but still possible. But, a pet shop with puppies and goldfish seems far-fetched (and irresponsible, one would guess). A fully stocked jewellery store is ludicrous and a pharmacy with controlled substances is not only unlikely, but illegal. There's even mention of cash being left in the registers. I found myself often wondering if the original idea had been one of a more "post-apocalyptic" scenario and then the author changed it, losing something during the translation.
Still, I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars. I had a lot of fun reading it, it poses quite a few interesting questions about ourselves and our lives, it has some unforgettable moments and it almost perfectly blends opposites: optimism and despair, the mundane and the bizarre and, above all, the most utopian idealism and the most coarse pragmatism. It could be brilliant with more time devoted to develop characters and a more believable setting, but it's still a much worth reading book.
******
Stranded in Sunshine
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
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3 out of 4 stars
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One shopping Mall, twelve people, five years. This is the basic premise driving "A Better Place", the name the optimistic characters embarking in a brand new utopia give their world in Eric Henderson's new novel Stranded in Sunshine. After one of the characters becomes very rich by investing in the stock market, she decides to purchase a small shopping mall and calls some of her old friends and acquaintances. The idea is simple and strangely seductive: To re-build society inside this protected environment, giving up (some) modern day comforts, technology and money. Each participant will take care of a store. And since the stores are still fully stocked, they will trade, exchange, and deal however they see fit. By the end of a five-year period, they will have, hopefully, become much better people than they were and will have built a healthier and happier society.
As readers, we are treated to the quirky and fascinating series of situations the characters put themselves in, pretty much as soon as they arrive at A Better Place. The novel is extremely fast-paced and it sometimes seems as if it moved with the goofy speed of silent movies. And, it is every bit as funny and bizarre as most silent movies are when we watch them today. Each chapter is written in the first person by one of the characters, which allows us to get access to their points of view, feelings and thoughts about the events as they develop. The use of the first person, present tense, for the narration gives us a sense of immediacy in the events, and it brilliantly achieves a feeling of "being there": the illusion of being present as the actions unfold is very clear and it is probably why this book is so easy to read and so difficult to put down.
The other main reason why this book is so hard to leave is simply because it's so much fun! Mixture of sitcom, soap opera, satire and dark comedy, it never fails to be engaging, and it never stops throwing curve balls at the reader. The first person narration, again, helps a lot in building surprise: as we always only know partial "slices" of reality, and as we only see the characters biased by their perceptions and opinions on themselves and others, we never fully know what to expect of them, how they are going to react, what they are going to do under certain circumstances. For the most part, the result is refreshing and insightful. Other times, though, it just doesn't work too well.
Probably because of the relatively short length of the book, especially taking into account that most of the 12 characters play an important role to the plot, at some points I was left off with the feeling that the characters were not fully developed. There's very little back story to them, we don't even know how old they are (we know that most of them seem to be in their late 20s, early 30s, but that's just speculation on my part), we know too little about their true motivations for being there and, with a few exceptions, we almost know nothing of their current feelings and emotions. I found the female characters were even more one-dimensional in that respect. I think if we knew more of them, many of their actions and decisions would seem a lot less whimsical and arbitrary, a bit less selfish, perhaps.
The other thing I had quite an issue with, and it kept on bothering me the whole time, was that it was extremely difficult for me to buy into the proposed setting of reality. The main idea, that someone has made a lot of money and decides to buy a shopping mall is fairly easy to accept. Now, I can't think of any good reason why each individual shop would leave their stores fully stocked. I could probably accept that maybe the furniture, electronics or clothes shops might make a deal and leave their products. Food stores? Not too likely, but still possible. But, a pet shop with puppies and goldfish seems far-fetched (and irresponsible, one would guess). A fully stocked jewellery store is ludicrous and a pharmacy with controlled substances is not only unlikely, but illegal. There's even mention of cash being left in the registers. I found myself often wondering if the original idea had been one of a more "post-apocalyptic" scenario and then the author changed it, losing something during the translation.
Still, I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars. I had a lot of fun reading it, it poses quite a few interesting questions about ourselves and our lives, it has some unforgettable moments and it almost perfectly blends opposites: optimism and despair, the mundane and the bizarre and, above all, the most utopian idealism and the most coarse pragmatism. It could be brilliant with more time devoted to develop characters and a more believable setting, but it's still a much worth reading book.
******
Stranded in Sunshine
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
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