See Now Then: A Novel Audiobook

" An acidic incantation of marriage gone rotten. I had to mentally reframe this as revenge-fiction to even see it to completion. "

" My initial confusion turned to annoyance as I felt the text repeated the same information, dressed up in different phrases. I can respect the strong feelings each family member felt toward another, but was unable to 'feel' them through the narrative. I felt the author was telling me herself rather than letting the characters portray the story. It is rare I leave a book unfinished deliberately, but I just could not finish this, despite returning at 4 different occasions to try, with an open mind. "

" Weird contrived and reading it all the way through did not give me the satisfaction I wanted at the end. I was expecting more and got the same oh crappy divorce ending. "

" This book just did not do it for me. I am a fan of Jamaica Kincaid from previous novels so my hopes and expectations were high. Even had they been low, See Now Then still would have fallen short of them. Nothing that I disliked about it is unintentional. It wasn't a case of poor execution. Kincaid wrote this story in the manner that she did with purpose that simply did not appeal to me. The constant repetition of certain words/phrases did little to lull me in. This is a short novel, coming in at under 200 pages. If the repetition was minimized to a more customary amount, the word count of See Now Then probably would not even qualify for novella status. It would have to make due with categorization as a long short story. There is no plot to speak of. Kincaid's goal is not to tell a tale so much as to invoke a mood. The mood is that of hatred. A man hates his wife, his family, his life. We aren't told why specifically, except towards the end when we're informed that the wife was condescending and mean spirited to a waitress. I suppose there is no why. Once you fall out of love with someone and yearn to be with someone else, anyone else, you feel like a prisoner who of course loathes the jailer. But the narrative isn't about the event with the waitress or any other one in particular. It's about a woman being aware that the man she loves does not love her in return, and eventually he does something about it. And it's about the relativity of time, how Now and Then are basically one and the same, a point repeated ad nauseam. We are made aware of the husband's unhappiness from not much after the first sentence - a very long one, as the vast majority of them are, yet another characteristic that I didn't find endearing. The rest of the book serves only to reinforce this point. Gorgeous language can carry a non plot driven story a long way, but I wasn't so swept away by Kincaid's prose that I didn't notice or care that nothing was really happening. Not externally. Not internally. Not at all. I don't care to what degree this or any other novel may be autobiographical. I only care if I was absorbed by the tale, if I came to care about the characters. I was/did not. This is a subjective opinion, as they all are. You may love this book, and if you do, I promise not to hold it against you. :-) "

" I experienced the book as a fictionalized memoir about the failed marriage of an introspective black woman writer from the Caribbean to a son of the legendary editor of The New Yorker, William Shawn. My initial interest was in adding to my knowledge of the characters surrounding the magazine, for which I worked briefly during the 1960s. Admitting my preference for concise, linear writing, I was put off by the author's style -- long, repetitive sentences, looping and rambling through time -- but the book is mercifully short, and I stuck with it because I came to care about the people involved and wanted to find out how Ms Kincaid would resolve her understanding of the sad events the family lived through. "

" I don't know why but this book was completely different than I thought it would be. I didn't expect the novel to be so wandering. It was easy to get distracted because of this and despite being a slim novel, it took longer to read. "

" Molly's chapter of "Ulysses" meets "Autobiography of Red." Kincaid's Persephone is sister to Heracles. They are the children of "Girl," no longer a girl, and her husband, Mr. Sweet, a small and bitter man. Recommended. "

" I heard a great interview with the author on NPR and was intrigued. Sadly, this book is written in a style that I just couldn't get used to. There were so many run-on sentences and paragraphs that I felt like I was rushing through a story that hadn't even started yet. "

" Just too weird for me. "

" I couldn't follow it..the writing style drove me crazy..I have read ALL of Ms. Kincaid's books. Having lived in Antigua and having been married to an Antiguan I feel a loyalty and understanding with her writing and experiences...this book, I could not get into..will try another time "

" I wanted to love this book, but I found it depressing and overly introspective. Was it really fiction or just a retelling of an unhappy life? "

" I liked this more once I realized it was so autobiographical, but the whole Gertrude Stein stream-of-consciousness thing was wearying. "

" For what I think is the first time in my life, I am putting this book down unfinished. The stream-of-consciousness writing is hard to follow, and it's just too depressing to read at this point in my life. Maybe I will try it again at some later time, but I just could not get into it. "

" intense back and forth family drama #sixwordsummary "

" Could barely make it through this one- I listened to the audio on a long road trip and the authors reading of it made it even harder to follow than the text version. Not my jam. "