Who are these people? What is the plot? Why am I reading this book?I wondered all of those things while reading Picturing Will.Ann Beattie’s writing style is very nice (which is why I'm giving it two stars instead of just one). While the reader doesn’t have to work too hard to get through her sentences and paragraphs, the writing is not fluff, the vocabulary not trite. This book is not a silly romance novel. However, nice writing was not enough to grab me and really make me care about this book or its characters.Personally, I didn’t like any of the characters. I also didn’t love to hate any of the characters. I didn’t find any of them particularly interesting. I found it annoying that the narrative voice kept changing. Parts of the story were told from the mom’s part of view, parts from the dad’s point of view, parts from the step-mother’s point of view, parts from the kid’s point of view. I guess the reader is supposed to identify with (or at least understand) each of the characters after seeing the world through his or her eyes. I simply found them all a bit annoying, the adults self-centered and immature, the kid very solemn and wise, unlike any real kids I run into. A few chapters addressed the reader as if this were an advice book for parents. These chapters were just kind of weird and confusing and didn’t really seem to mesh with the rest of the story.Not much happens in this book. There wasn't much action or even very much character development. The reader learns about the characters and their attitudes, but nobody grows or changes or learns. I kept waiting for the plot arc to begin. I mostly kept waiting for something bad to happen to the kid. The book conveys the feeling of impending doom, but all that was impending for me was boredom.There is an unexpected plot twist near the end of the book that really excited me. Finally, I thought, something is going to happen. The plot twist not only didn’t actually make a lot of sense, it was never resolved (at least to my satisfaction).I don’t feel like this book did anything for me except help pass the time.
Typically Ann Beattie, this book is a lyrical tale of a child from a very broken family, spending time with his beloved mother, distant father, and devoted step father. There is some disturbing sexual abuse early on that never is exposed, but otherwise we see how a potentially dysfunctional childhood is turned into a nurtured, loved and protected period, due mainly to his stepfather, whose reminiscences at the end tie the book together. I enjoyed it more and more, though it did take me a while to see where she was going with this.
