93/111 - Neverland by Simon Crump

This is another one of the books I started reading on holiday, however I hadn't really enjoyed it that much while I was out there so I decided I'd try to give it another go before giving up. I still didn't like it, and ultimately couldn't be bothered to finish it.

The book's tagline is 'the unreal Michael Jackson story', and so I had assumed it would be some sort of satirical take on his life, or maybe even at least have some sort of narrative structure. Unfortunately not. The book seems to consist of a patchwork of fragments, and I've no idea whether they are supposed to be linked in any way. Some of them do appear to be linked, for example a series of snippets between Michael Jackson and Uri Geller (who I take it were friends while MJ was still alive).

They weren't unenjoyable as such, there was just absolutely nothing which compelled me to carry on reading them. The book and the writing stirred up a sort of feeling in me which I can remember a little from reading something like Light Boxes by Shane Jones, or Sarah by JT Leroy. Only less good. This was fairly dull and didn't evoke any feeling in me whatsoever, and ultimately I gave up reading because if the author can't be bothered to engage me with the writing, then I can't be bothered to use my time reading it. Done!

I feel like recently I have been quite cavalier with books and I have given up on quite a few of them. Maybe I'm just not very good at picking out books at the moment?

Next: I'm putting aside J-Pod for the moment, as I've had enough of Douglas Coupland for the time being, and I'm going to read The Guardians by Sarah Manguso.