Take One Candle Light a Room

Our book club will be discussing Susan Straight's Take One Candle Light a Room this month. It was selected as this year's Claremont On the Same Page read. We are a little slow on the uptake since the events for the selection were in the fall.

Anyway, this book has been lauded by a variety of reviewers who, I think, have a great deal more patience than I do when it comes to this style of writing. I found the choppy style (not quite stream of consciousness, but close in some places), the plethora of characters and the amount of details which do not add either to the plot nor the tone of the story too confusing.

I think the story itself bears telling, once I sort of figured out what it was, but I felt as though I waded through so much extraneous stuff. For example, there was attention paid to the fact that the narrator was bitten by fire ants, and how that stung her legs like crazy, and then they applied some home remedies to her bites which helped some but not a lot. I have no idea how that illuminated either the plot nor the characters.

This is the second book by Straight that I have read, but I don't think I'll choose another one unless it's for a book club.