The Red Car

The Red Car: A Novel – Marcy Dermansky

Grief is a funny thing.

Highly recommended novel. I’m unsure of the source of the referrals, too. While I’m passing familiar with some of the settings, I can’t say I know them a lot, not first-hand. Does it matter?

The undergrad/grad school feeling is very familiar. The sense of it. Maybe not the schools themselves.

There’s always that “I finished school — now what” sentiment still floating free. That sense of unfinished business.

The streets of San Francisco always evoke a literary twinge and faded memories.

Maybe a ghost story? As we walk in the shadows of the giants. It is a haunting tale, short, almost sweet, with a taste of magical realism that seems just inherent on the West Coast. One of those elements that isn’t found elsewhere.

The stylish prose flows, ebbs, and comports itself with perfunctory aplomb.

My single disappointment in the text was that I paid twelve bucks for it, a digital copy, and even though I did enjoy the book, I might have liked it better as a library book.

My local library didn’t seem to have a copy.

The price was gnawing at me, at the end of the book, as I finished reading it. If it was a regular book, I wouldn’t have read it yet. It would be sitting in my “soon to read” stack, which, at the moment, is overflowing.

I am moving that ARC to the top. I swear, it’s next.

If the book had cost 99 cents, or a $1.99, I would be happier. The “Pulp Fiction” price. But if I only paid 99 cents, I am unsure that I would read it, or pause to think about it.

Stuck on the pricing, at the point when I was more than half-way through the the novel, concerned that I’d spent too much, that makes me wonder. So far, one typographical error, not that I can be better about that.

Not me. I live to dangle modifiers.

There was a portion of the novel that I enjoyed immensely, as the story found its “legs,” got up and walked. Rhythm, pacing, description, stylish prose that wasn’t over-wrought, but still colored and framed with certain flair. The author was confident in the prose?

I suspect this more along the lines of novella, and I’m sure it is bound to be the darling of the MFA & Lit. Crit. circles, at some point. Might’ve been the nod and prod I got to purchase it in the first place.

For a sparely populated plot, the story moves forward quickly, and there is that “poet-like” flavor that instills each word with extra meaning.

To be sure, by the time I was two-thirds of the way through, I just curled up on the couch, and continued to read. Not as engaged as I would be with, say a thriller of some sort, but still curious as to what was going to happen.

Great book? Probably not. Good book? Yes. Different from wha I would normally read? Yes, for sure. If I hadn’t found a glaring grammatical mistake part-way through, I don’t know that I would be worried that it was over-priced.

The serious problem with reading it as a library book? Can’t underline and make margin notes.

The other problem with an iTunes version? I can’t just hand it off to someone else.

More’s the shame, as it was a delightful little novel.

The Red Car: A Novel – Marcy Dermansky