Sunday Book Review: Bleeding Kansas

I should title this "what I'm reading" or "what I've read" since I really don't review books properly. I tend to write about books I like, or books that have touched me. I don't usually bother to blog about books I dislike.

Today, I guess I am making an exception.

Bleeding Kansas

by Sara Paretsky

I know this book is fiction, and therefore I should probably give the author a break... but after reading again and again that the author is "from Kansas" and how her love of Kansas shines through in this novel...

I have to say that I just don't see it.

And whoever wrote those reviews, I'm not sure they actually read the book. I found the characters shallow and offensive. I found the voice -- this all-knowing point of view that could see inside every character's head -- extremely distracting.

Bleeding Kansas is about three families who settled in the Lawrence area in the 1850s. In modern day, their descendants are carrying on a feud that, in my mind, just doesn't have enough grounding in reality to ring true. You have the extreme right Christian family who shares their neighbors trespasses on the family website. You have the middle of the road "normal" family led by a mother who flits from passion to passion without regard to consequence. And then there is a lesbian newcomer from "the city" who practices Wicca. Thrown together, the reader is supposed to find the tension and hatred believable. The atttitudes -- as portrayed in this novel -- are the worst of all stereotypes magnified.

The biggest problem I had is that there is not a single character to relate to. You want to like someone, you just can't figure out who because all their actions seem so far removed from any real depth or human emotion.

This isn't Kansas -- even in "caricature" as the author states in a recent Journal World article. I've lived here for all but five years of my life and even the MOST conservative people I know come nowhere near being the kind of horrible, idiotic characters portrayed in this novel.

Perhaps I now better understand...

If this... and that family from Topeka who shall remain nameless... are the only press we get... no wonder Kansans have the reputation of being ignorant country bumpkins.

Do I sound like I'm taking it personally? Yeah, I probably do. I shouldn't, but I do, because I wanted to believe in this author who claims her roots are in Kansas.

I stuck with the story, all the way through, looking for that glimmer of recognition. Something that showed me she really does know Kansas, and understands Kansans, and finds beauty in Kansas.

It's not there. Take this book off your to-read list. And if you are not from Kansas... come visit us to see for yourself. This book -- even as a work of fiction -- doesn't tell a story about Kansas or the kind of people who live here. Perhaps the author would have gotten away with it if she had set her story in some nameless/faceless place and given her readers a little more to relate to in the characters.

Family feuds = lots of potential.

Kansas history = lots of potential.

This book = didn't make the cut.