Does this have to be how it ends?
I knew going into reading Kathleen MacMahon's first novel, This is How it Ends , that I would have trouble with it. Straightforwardly, this is because it received an enormous advance, and I'm envious. I'm hoping that by outing that here and now, what I have to say will somehow be more objective, as opposed to simply objectionable. Let me also say, however, that I really wanted to enjoy it — no one goes into reading a novel wanting it to be rubbish. There isn't enough time for that. You're always hoping for gold. Here are the problems I had with it: 1. Contrived literariness It’s such obviously obvious literary ground. It comes across like a recipe for a 'literary novel' — you can feel the market positioning. Can you, by the way, have a 'literary novel'? Surely something's either brilliantly well written, or it's not. Surely 'literature' refers to a piece of writing that's so powerful it st...