X Talks Silent

Media: Audio
Read by Karen Cass
Length: ~10 hours
I have no idea as to how this book landed on my tbr list. The only clue I had as to its contents was its cover that looks very much like a late 1950s swap-card. Swapping cardboard cards with pictures of flowers and pretty little girls in hoop skirts and braided hair is what girls used to do for fun in the late 1950s in Australia. Simple times. Flat times. I remember those days in black and white. The pastel-colored cards were the bright lights of our beige lives.

Gen X-er Clare Chambers has done her homework. She tells us so in the “Credits” in the audio version. Her 1950s facts are spot on. Her style and plot are flat and go with the period, lacking subtlety and depth. Textureless. I doubt this was on purpose. Perhaps the dreariness of those bleak times got to her.

The main characters are of the Silent Generation, and here Chambers falls down. While the environment - the buildings, cuisine, fashions - are portrayed accurately, the adult characters are surprisingly aware and supportive of Gen-X values.women’s independence, sex outside marriage, gay sex, tolerance of atheism. But their inner lives are bland like their food and the architecture of the time. All a bit scrambled up.

I read somewhere that Claire Chambers has been likened to Kate Atkinson. Poor Kate.

Back to the book. There are two storylines. A beautiful woman (Silent gen) believes that her daughter is a product of parthenogenesis, that is conceived without the participation of male sperm. Gretchen writes a letter claiming this to a regional newspaper in Kent. The letter is picked up and a woman journo (Jean) takes it on as a virgin birth story. Jean does her background research while she partakes of a lot of Silent gen things. She uses pay phones that connect to human operators, she eats meat with three veg for “tea”, smokes, and is surprised when children say cute things.

While researching for her virgin birth story Jean has it off with the salt-of-the-earth husband of the beautiful Gretchen, who happens to be a closet lesbian. This affaire between Jean and Gretchen’s husband is the second story of the novel, and runs along in parallel with the virgin birth.

I read till the end. I thought of how it was for my parents back in the late fifties and how we kids had no idea of what troubles they had in their younger lives. I felt sorry for the pre-pubescent me with my swap-cards..

I gave this book a 3, 2 for research and 1 by default. ( )

DNF at page 43 - couldn't get into it the characters were very flat and uninteresting. ( )

Lieftallig boek dat je onderdompelt in de jaren 50 van vorige eeuw. De titel is niet onverdienstelijk: kleine geluksmomenten zijn waar je tevreden moet mee zijn, mooi geplande dromen dromen glippen uit je handen..Eenvoudig concept dat de eindjes mooi verbindt. ( )

Really enjoyed this book until the ending. 4.5* ( )

This book is so damn wholesome, so pure. It's fluff and wonderful and then... then after 3/4ths of pure goodness we get, uh...

UH!

Hello, 911, I'd like to report so many crimes. This book just went straight into chaos. Spoilers before the line.

___

So basically the mysterious virgin pregnancy is the brother of the head doctor(I think that's who) and the brother somehow magically raped the virgin mother while she was asleep. I've no idea how he managed this, it's very unclear to me and I wanna go with how my brain works: she took sleeping pills and fell into a deep sleep. As someone who takes pills to help me sleep, I've slept through earthquakes, literal earthquakes, as well as storms. So he sneaks into her room, and rapes her, then wanders off.

I'm gonna ignore the many questions I have but here is the series of them in no order:
Did he dress her back up after raping her?
Did he only climax inside of her and nowhere else?
If he didn't climax inside of her, isn't it weird she had these stains on her clothes?
Did she sleep completely naked?
Did she wake up half-undressed and just shrug it off?
Often rape has sore and aching aftermath, as does casual sex, isn't she sore?
She didn't even have a vague dream about being violated or a weird feeling something was wrong?
Seriously, there's just a guy who rapes sleeping women scurrying about out there?
The fuck this guy so slick at sneaking in, then sneaking out?

Jane the Virgin vibes ahoy until that end.

Basically a horribly violent rape, then a horrific train accident happens. Boom! Violent death ending, woooo!

I've handled My Sister's Keeper, but this one didn't have that energy. MSK had a dark and dreary theme the entire book. Small Pleasures was wholesome and wonderful and good! It had no dark underlying energy. This came out of nowhere, just like the train! ( )