Take Me Apart...ya basic.

While I really dislike abandoning books halfway through, I just can't do it anymore. So far everything about Take Me Apart is 'basic': been there, done that.
✔ a dual storyline following two women
✔ the woman in the 'now' becomes increasingly obsessed by the dead/missing/older woman
✔ there is a handsome guy who might be dangerous (he usually has olive skin, dark hair, and smells mysteriously sexy)
✔ one of the women is running away from her past
✔ the other woman also has a lot of secrets
✔ a splash of pop feminism masquerading as a raw portrayal of the female experience/creativity
✔ an incredibly generic house in which bad stuff may have happened

I really love books that focus on artists, and some of my favourite ones revolve around female photographers, such as Self-Portrait with Boy and Generation Loss. In these two novels we learn of the character's relationship to their art, their techniques, their struggles for recognition. Half-way through Take Me Apart and I know very little about Miranda's work. We know it's 'visceral', and bloody, and oh so feminist!
I was hoping that the book would at least give us a vivid impression of the art world during the 80s but...it doesn't.
Sara Sligar tries to shock her readers through Miranda's unfiltered diaries, but to be honest I didn't find Miranda's language particularly 'transgressive' or 'empowering'. Wow, she uses the word vagina, how real she is. There are a few gratuitous scenes that are meant to show us just all the terrible ways in which women's bodies and minds are controlled and debased by men. Time and again Sligar sacrifices realism for dramatic effect.

Then we have Kate. Jeez. If you've ever read a book that was classified as a domestic thriller, then you already know her. She's different, she has issues, she hasn't had it easy. Her idiocy is made to seem as necessary, because only she will be able to uncover the truth behind x (in this case, Miranda's life and suicide). These characters decide to play detective, thinking they are some sort of modern Miss Marple, even if they have no idea what they're doing. They ask stupid question that will obviously rile people up. Kate believes she's entitled to learn about Miranda's private life because she was hired by Theo, Miranda's son, to create an archive of his mother's stuff. [She snoops around his house, believes that she has a right to see everything related to Miranda, including her private diary. Come on! She's a former journalist, a supposedly intelligent human being...yet the narrative makes it seem as if her violation of Theo, and Miranda's, privacy is due to her 'thoroughness'. Surely she's aware that Theo gets to decide what can be included in the archive? And that she acts so outraged by Theo questioning her work ethic. Girl, stop lying to yourself. You have no integrity.]
Also, having just met Theo she believes that she has some sort right over him...sure Kate. Cause that's not creepy. After a few tense interactions she cries out to him to 'act like a human being!'. Kate is a voyeur, and she wants to witness Theo's grief...and I'm supposed to feel for her? Because of the 'big bad thing' that made her leave New York? Sure, whatever.

The novel's more dramatic scenes were incredibly unconvincing. [The cake scene for example. Am I to believe that a group of 'normal/sane' individuals give Theo a 'welcome cake' with a photo of his dead mother? And that they would 'unintentionally' place two candle in her eyes? Come on! This is ridiculous! ]
Sligar also tries to incorporate racial inequality in her story by throwing in two women of colour whose only purpose is to remind Kate of social privilege. These two characters do not have personalities nor extended scenes but appear only so that the narrative can superficially touch upon race.

Take Me Apart fails to be shocking, woke, artsy, or real. The more I read, the more aggravated I became. This novel is beyond mediocre, yet the narrative take itself so seriously. Life's too short and all of that so I'm going to say bye bye to this terrible novel.

Take Me Apart fails to be shocking, woke, artsy, or real. The more I read, the more aggravated I became. This novel is beyond mediocre, yet the narrative take itself so seriously. Life's too short and all of that so I'm going to say bye bye to this terrible novel.