Review: The Book of Ralph, by Christopher Steinsvold

I got a real kick out of the first third of this book.  I laughed, I told my friends how good it was and how much I was enjoying it. I posted about it on Litsy.  The next third felt, well, awkward as if the story had somehow gotten lost in the tangle of philosophical talking heads. And from then on it just went downhill for me as it turned into a weird sort of shaggy dog story.

It’s so disappointing to be reading a book you think is amazeballs, and then watch it crash and burn. But on further consideration, I’m not sure what Steinsvold could have done with his premise.  It’s one of those ideas writers have all the time: What if someone put an ad for Diet Coke on the moon?  Then we riff off of that for a while, and there’s always some good stuff that comes out of it, but in the end that’s not enough for a whole novel. If you can come up with a snappy ending, you can probably get a short story out of it.

But you know the story is going badly wrong when as you’re reading, you’re thinking “Will you shut UP already?” Probably the author wants you to be furrowing your brow and thinking “My, that’s deep,” and maybe it is, maybe Steinsvold’s disdain for popular culture is really significant, and there is much we can learn from it, but honestly when I get repeatedly whacked over the head with A Message my receptivity suffers.  I’m not stupid, I got the point in the first chapter.  Time to move along.

Could the author’s hand be heavier?  I doubt it.  Could he belabor points more completely? I can’t imagine how. Could his ruminations on the nature of life and being human go on much longer? Oh god, I hope not.

So points for a good beginning, but this one was about as big a literary disappointment as I’ve had all year.