“Very Cold People” by Sarah Manguso

I actually read this book between Scent of Flowers and The Fell but then completely forgot to blog about it. I'm not sure I would have found much to say about it at the time, but now that it's three weeks later, I'm going to have a really tough time coming up with anything to write. 

I do remember that my overarching feeling about this book was that it was weird. The characters were weird--a little inscrutable, kind of hard to relate to, not very open or easy to understand . . . in general, I guess, what you would expect Very Cold People to be like. And the story itself was a bit weird, in a plotless and meandering way. It's written like a memoir (although I assume it's not) and strikes me as an attempt to record every retained memory, with no effort to highlight the transformative or gloss over the mundane. But it was also, I think, nicely written and intriguing; otherwise I would have hated it. 

I also remember that this book stirred up a particular sort of nostalgia in me. It describes a very American childhood with many links to my own very American childhood, from Lite Brite to friendship bracelets.