Reading a not-very-good novel at the moment, which, however, attempts something interesting and important. I won't describe exactly what it's about, but it has something to do with motherhood. The way that it's bad is interesting: the writer has a certain facility with language, but can't seem to avoid the occasional line of purple prose. As I'm reading, I start to sink into her characters and their situations--then, one of her sentences stands up and shouts, "Pay attention to me!" instead of blending with the other sentences around it. This might be interesting if the novel were about itself, in proper postmodernist fashion--or about language--but it's not.
What is interesting and important about it? It describes a mother-daughter relationship in which the daughter pursues the mother's dream career, a career the mother wanted, but did not have the talent or determination to pursue; the complexities of their connection to each other are well-described and lead to unpredictable yet plausible outcomes. The characters themselves feel strangely flat and predictable, they just aren't all that carefully fleshed-out, but their conflicted feelings towards each other are well-portrayed.
Sometimes bad novels aren't so bad.
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