I had originally picked this up to finish off my Expanding Horizons Challenge list because the review by CdnReader made me curious, but then Sarah gave me Interpreter of Maladies and I read that one instead. Still, it was sitting on my dresser, not due yet, and so I picked it up. I thought it was interesting, but like CdnReader, I wasn’t overly impressed by it.

Devi — a late-20s Indian woman — decides to commit suicide. Her life is terrible, especially in comparison to her father’s and her older sister’s, and there’s nothing left to live for. But, her mother saves her, and as a result, Devi moves in with her parents, stops talking and begins cooking. It also causes a chain reaction, causing everyone in her family to reevaluate whether or not their life is worth living.

I liked that there was a lot about decisions and comparisons. Everything everyone does in this book has some sort of consequence, whether it was a recent decision, or something more in the past. I liked that; I liked that people had to deal with the consequences of their own lives. I thought the observations that Amulya Malladi made about sisters and family and comparisons and parenting were good ones. I even liked Devi as a character, though the rest of her family took a bit of getting used to. The prose felt a bit clinical at times, but that’s possibly due to the switching of the narratives; you get portions of the story from different points of view, and it didn’t really work as well as I hoped it would.

But, I think one of my biggest disappointments was the lack of food. Yeah, it was there, hanging out in the background with Devi’s experimental fusion Indian cooking, but it wasn’t as delicious or as sensory as I hoped it would be. I wanted to get a feel for the Indian food, and I felt that I was missing something because I didn’t know what half the dishes were. I wanted this book to make me desire to eat Indian food, but it fell flat. I was even disappointed by “mouthwatering recipes”. They were mostly just lists of ingredients and ways to throw them together, not the how of it all. Which I found disappointing.

So, in the end, it’s a decent novel — kind of soap-operaish, but with interesting people — but nothing to jump and shout about.

Forgive the bad Asian food metaphor. I thought of it early on while reading American Gods, and I liked it so much that I had to use it.

See, Stardust is fried rice. It’s nondescript. Everyone likes it. Sure, it may have elements that you don’t like, say watercress, or things that you wonder why it’s in there — broccoli or celery — but pretty much, everyone likes fried rice. It’s good. It’s simple. It’s tasty.

But, American Gods is kim chee. (Hubby took issue with this; he likes Korean food. I have to admit that I do too.) It’s loud. It’s obnoxious. It’s spicy. It’s not easily accessible. It takes some real getting used to. Not many people eat kim chee for the first time and say “Wow! This fermented spicy cabbage is THE BEST THING OUT THERE!” (I know I didn’t. I thought, when Hubby and I were dating and he took me to a Korean restaurant that he was eating one of the grossest things I’ve ever seen.)

American Gods is one weird book. As I thought about it, I’m not sure if it’s awful weird or brilliant weird. While I was reading, it was kind of awful weird. It’s incredibly vulgar and basically without a plot until the last 1/4 of the book. I felt like I was a car stuck in the mud, wheels spinning. Shadow, as a main character, is interesting, but actionless. He’s just a drifter, someone who moves from story to story within the book. I skipped whole sections, wondering about the point of that particular weird encounter or story. (Especially the interludes. They were really weird, and pretty pointless.)

But, after finishing it (at the end I thought, “REALLY! That’s it? That’s the whole point?!”), and thinking about it, and talking to Hubby about it, I began to realize the brilliance of the whole thing. You’re supposed to feel like a car spinning in the mud. The main character’s supposed to be a ruse, a distraction. That’s because (sorry, can’t avoid the spoilers) it’s all one big con. Not just for the characters, but for reader as well. Sure, if you’re a close reader (which I’m not), you would have picked up on the clues (brilliant foreshadowing), and figured it out way before I did. But, even so, when it’s all said and done, I think it’s a brilliant concept.

See? It’s Korean food. It takes some getting used to, but once you do, it just might be some of the best stuff you’ve eaten. (It just might not be for everyone.)

This was the other Jane Austen (along with Northanger Abbey) that merited a one sentence review: “It’s not a bad book; I just like her other stuff a whole lot better. ” Actually, I’m going to change that, borrowing a line from Becky’s review of Camilla: It’s not Jane Austen’s best work, being both delightfully pleasant (I did smile a few times) and yet sluggishly dull. But it’s not my favorite Austen, and it never will be.

Why do I not like thee? Let me count the ways:

1) Fanny. She’s annoying. She’s a doormat, a pushover. Sure, she’s an upright, moral person, but what good is that if she can’t even do anything without Edmund there. Yeah, there’s the whole status thing and Mrs. Norris is sufficiently vile, but even so, I’d like her to just be slightly more assertive, or at least more something. She reminded me of Anne in Persuasion, but Anne’s so much more sympathetic. Perhaps it’s because she’s older. But Anne knows her own mind, and even though her family (and others) think little of her, she’s not a doormat. Fanny is, and that drove me nuts. That, and she spent the entire book pining for Edmund. (Mr. Crawford wasn’t that bad until the end. Okay, so their sensibilities were not similar, but he really was trying and she just sat there pining for Edmund. What if he had never come round?) She’s not a sympathetic heroine at all. Which brings me to point 2.

2) The love story was terrible. This book was a long diatribe on what Austen believed to make up a good character. She abhorred excess in all its forms — either too rich or too drunk or too poor or too flirty — and Fanny was supposed to be the model of quiet, sensible decorum. (She didn’t like the spoiling of the Bertram sisters, but she also didn’t like the excess of ill manners at her parents house.) The love story was an afterthought, only coming on in the last 50 pages. Even Northanger Abbey had a better love story. When you read Austen, you want to read good character development and societal parody but you also want a good love story. At least I do. And I was highly unsatisfied with this one. (It’s not the “kissing cousins” thing. I can deal with that. It’s the “Edmund’s in love with Miss Crawford for the entire book and it’s just because she wasn’t horrified enough — or at all, really — at the actions of Henry and Maria and so Edmund realized that he could not marry someone who couldn’t be horrified at running away with someone else’s wife and that means Fanny has to be perfect” thing. Bleh.)

3) All the other characters. Enough said. Mrs. Norris was vile, evil, and I wanted to smack her. No wonder Maria went wrong. Sir Thomas and Lady Betram were lazy and Mrs. Norris was just a snob. She’s worse than Lady Catherine deBerg, too, because Mrs. Norris really has no reason to be a snob. She’s someone Lady Catherine would look down on. That makes it worse. Lady Bertram was as much a pushover as Fanny (maybe that’s why they got along?). Sir Thomas was a flip-flopper, sometimes being nice to Fanny, sometimes being a real jerk. Edmund was a twit. Sorry. See above. Tom was a drunk (at least he reformed). The Bertram sisters were shallow flirts and Maria got what she deserved. No pity. Mary Crawford was also a shallow, money grubbing flirt who could have been okay, but Austen decided that no, the only “decent” person in the book is going to be the pushover Fanny. And then there’s Henry. I actually liked him until he ran off with Maria. He wasn’t too bad; a bit of a flirt, but he was actually fun and interesting (and he read and acted well).

Mansfield Park isn’t an Austen book I’m going to come back to any time soon. I’d say that’s too bad, but I’m perfectly happy with the Austen books I do like.