All the King's Men (1946), a Pulitzer prize winning novel vaguely about Huey P. Long (ish), just took up three full days of my life that I will never ever get back.
This book is lush and long. Instead of racing straight to a plot point or sticking to a single story (sigh) the author walks the readers through this then that then turns them to the side and keeps them busy for awhile.
I imagine that because this book was published in 1946 America -- before MTV, before CNN, before ummmmmm everything -- people reading the book WANTED the story to roam this way and that way, keep their minds and hearts busy and off the fact pretty much every single thing the whole world was changing.
Of course I loved this book, so let me start off with what I didn't love.
I expected some sort of straighter history of Huey P. Long and Share the Wealth and instead found myself reading about houses and streets and cars going by.
Beautiful writing but I have a secret. I liked it better when Gabriel Garcia Marquez practiced this same torture of literary detention on me, filling pages with acute observations about minute details that moved the plot nowhere for a few minutes.
This book isn't as sexy because the tone is intentionally gritty and sweaty and edgy. At one point the narrator almost has sex. Almost.
I'm not sure the narrator liked women, especially ones past the age of 20.
Read this below about a women he hasn't seen but still "knows" what she looks like:
I loved the quote below by the Boss, describing the law as a teeny tiny blanket:
Of course, I knew the whole time the Boss character was going to be killed and I found myself turning pages looking for the assassination and trying to sniff out a plot before the author revealed it to me.
I wasn't left unsatisfied, and I'm sure I will pick this book up again in the future and enjoy it immensely, realizing what a horrible decision it was to try to get myself to push through this 661 page book before mentally starting my Spring Break.
