Exciting Times

Three stars – oh come on! Exciting Times is brilliantly written. Shimmering dialogue and throwaway seemingly effortless description. Not sure I ‘liked’ either Julian or Ava – the first emotionally crippled in that awful educated English male way, the latter similarly crippled by her relentless self-criticism. But Dolan is both smart and funny. Plus she’s absorbed what she’s read whether it’s The Great Gatsby, or Bright Lights – Big City or Susanna Moore’s In The Cut (I’m guessing – but Exciting Times is just as good as either of these). And it’s genuinely, playfully, erotic. I want Edith’s address. And, yes – I’ll be waiting for the sequel. I already am. Mark Henshaw author of The Snow Kimono

This book puts on airs of being smart by using big words and ostentatious displays of complicated subjects. I found the characters to be difficult to connect to and contradictory in their behavior. The writing style left me feeling displaced. It was hard to tell where you were or who was speaking, leaving me confused and having to go back and re-read sections over and over again because I thought I had missed something. I also found the authors treatment of the main character’s sexuality as something not central to her identity, when this is seldom their case for LGBT people when they realize who they are. I actively regret spending 6 hours of my life reading this book.

A Very Exciting Time…but not really. Maybe. I am just jaded, but the story seemed to drag and go nowhere. An aimless 20 something in Hong Kong meets and shacks up with two very different people. The writing is droll and possibly a fan fiction moment to Sally Rooney. Maybe this is a whole thing with young Irish female writers, novels about the mundane. Yes, there is a love triangle, but this is the most boring love triangle possible and the characters perfectly run of the mill.

The angst of your twenties-trying to figure out who you are can be exhausting-you’re trying on identities like outfits. And sometimes you’re not sure anything looks good and nothing fits quite right.

Ava is poised for a quarter life crisis. She’s a long way from her home in Ireland. She’s teaching the dispassionate subject of grammar to kids in Hong Kong. She’s sharing an Airbnb with roommates who don’t like her. She’s lost and lonely.

Meeting Julian seems to help. Suddenly she has someone to spend time with and have casual sex. So what if he’s allergic to commitment and won’t call her his girlfriend? He lets her move into his apartment and stay while he travels for months at a time for work…and that must mean something…right?

Julian’s frequent absences allow her the opportunity to meet someone else, Edith. Edith is beautiful, cultured, and confident. Ava admires her and allows herself to explore her sexuality as she ventures into a relationship with Edith, someone who is able to express and reciprocate her feelings.

But Julian is going to come back and Ava has to figure out how she feels and even who she really is before that happens.

Dolan has a great eye and I was poised over my Kindle highlighting witty dialogue and observations more than a few times.

My main problem was Ava. I need to have a protagonist I can rally behind and Ava’s self-pitying rants just made me irritated and want to refer her to a good therapist. She spends so much time telling us how lacking she is that I started to believe her. That doesn’t make for a worthy heroine or it might make me too old to empathize.

Author’s note: I’m not in my twenties although still full of angst.

Exciting times? They were ok. I was disappointed and wanting a little more.

You could happily read this book just for the repartee and the way Ava expresses her thoughts. Witty and funny, sure, but she also expresses the ordinary in such original ways: after a compliment, He seemed closer to me on the couch than he had a moment ago, although he hadnt moved. Julia is an appealing character, though probably not to everyone. She is bright, analytical, reflective, insecure, fundamentally decent, resistant to self-justification, in search of her own way in the world; she is also a bit too prone to feeling sorry for herself. She has close relationships with Julian and Edith. Interestingly, while the author shows the basis for the former, and it evolves, you have to accept what the characters say about the latter, it is not entirely convincing.

One thing bothers me. There are references to past experiences which are presumably intended to cast light on the current personalities of the 3 main characters, but it does not work very well for Ava and Julian; is Julian really reacting so strongly to past rejection, and has Ava also really suffered acutely from past rejection?

Following are some examples of the writing which I enjoyed. Edith had come into my life just when there was a vacancy. I felt superior to people like Scott and Madison, but really the three of us were hollow. They filled themselves with a little bit of everyones approval, whereas I was more discerning. When I met someone I liked, I wanted all of them, and fast. He doesnt want anyone to like him just for him, I said. He wouldnt know what to do with the information. Are they giving you a raise? I said. Yes. This news was consoling. At least he wasnt abandoning me for the same money (do not take this as a spoiler).

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