crabbygirl reviewed Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
Review of 'Exciting Times' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
written in the same opaque style of Sally Rooney (another modern Irishwoman), this novel was both bewildering and instructional, for the same reasons. Young people have entire new sets of anxieties and communications now that texting and emojis and stalking-through-social-media are layered on top of real life interactions. At some point, the protagonist interprets an in-person comment that followed with a smile, as more emotionally damaging than if it had been a text, followed by a smiling emoji. The wall is so solid that she can't even reach her own emotions at times. In fact everyone was emotionally distant. Growing up with the proper 'social justice' expectations to reject classism, colonialism and white privilege but being immersed in upper middle class society in a foreign country is living non-stop with cognitive dissonance. It must be exhausting. And lonely. No wonder this gen is anxious, depressed and suicidal.
It is only …
written in the same opaque style of Sally Rooney (another modern Irishwoman), this novel was both bewildering and instructional, for the same reasons. Young people have entire new sets of anxieties and communications now that texting and emojis and stalking-through-social-media are layered on top of real life interactions. At some point, the protagonist interprets an in-person comment that followed with a smile, as more emotionally damaging than if it had been a text, followed by a smiling emoji. The wall is so solid that she can't even reach her own emotions at times. In fact everyone was emotionally distant. Growing up with the proper 'social justice' expectations to reject classism, colonialism and white privilege but being immersed in upper middle class society in a foreign country is living non-stop with cognitive dissonance. It must be exhausting. And lonely. No wonder this gen is anxious, depressed and suicidal.
It is only near the very end we learn the protagonist was taunted for 'appearing' to be gay in high school. Is this really her big trauma? I know Ireland is late to the game with respect to women's rights, but is being a lesbian such an earth-shattering pronouncement that she can't tell her family? Wasn't the "It gets better" video made over a decade ago? Also, she treats sex as transactional (trading it for a better place to live) and casual. She moves on to Edith without specifying that this sex is substantially different (and then moves back to a man) Like Rooney, the intimacy that characters share is completely divorced from sex. Instead, power is the goal. Come to think of it, that's not surprising if you grow-up seeing all of life through a power differential lens. hmm.
Anyhow, even though I couldn't muster any concern for the characters, I did enjoy the author's construction of wry observations like: "the more compound adjectives describing an apartment, the higher the rent". She excelled at using Irish-English idioms as a literary device:
"The dictionary would not equip these children for Dublin. "Mind yourself" upon leaving a house was different to "Mind yourself" when using a serrated knife. "Don't mind him" meant he'd be teasing you, and "Mind him" meant either to take care of him or to take care of yourself around him. And all your minding happened in one mind, hopefully your own.
I was forever minding things in Hong Kong, but I couldn't always construe in what sense.
There were gems like that throughout. Sadly, this device can't be used in a subsequent book (without being gimmicky), so this debut might be all we get from Naoise Dolan.