Posted by Bel. The time is 4:01pm here in Wellington, NZ.
Turns out the library emails you now when you have an overdue book. A book such as this one, Gertrude Stein's "Three Lives", which even after five weeks I still had not finished. (I am a fast reader. Five weeks is practically three lives for me.)The novel had a lengthy, academic introduction (over 50 pages long!) which made for a daunting start. I then found the writing style too simplistic and repetitive for my liking.
Rather than evoking the commonplace lives of the working class women that the stories focussed on, it seemed to overemphasise the simplistic, plotness nature of the book and in general, lulled me to sleep as I struggled to hold the thick wee tome open. (Short pages with a wide spine is SUCH an awkward size for a book! Enough, I say!)
The fact I returned this to the library half unread is indicative of how little I was enjoying it: 1) I never made the time to keep up with it, and 2) I wasn't willing to pay to extend my loan of it. "Three Lives" gets two stars and one of those is only because of all the stuff in the introduction about Stein being friends with Cezanne and Picasso and stocking up on artworks constantly. Le sigh.
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