Blame Book

Last night I finished reading a book that for three-quarters of it I disliked. My dislike was exacerbated by the hoopla about it, including a nomination for a National Book Critics Circle award. Was I missing something, or many somethings, in my reading? How come many Amazon.com reviewers liked this book? I submitted a comment'no more reviews were permitted'in response to one of the reviewers. A woman who enjoyed the book answered me, in part, by encouraging me to finish the book. I did, and I'm glad I did.

Patsy MacLemoore is a recently minted, twenty-eight year old Ph.D. graduate in history, teaching at a small Southern California college. She's full of life, full of herself, a party girl, and an alcoholic. With several DUI arrests already, she is convicted of killing a young mother and her daughter while driving her car, an event she doesn't remember. 
While serving two-years in prison, she reluctantly begins attending AA meetings. Patsy is aware of her responsibility for the tragedy, an awareness that has her consider how she's lived her life. 
After prison she works to re-establish her life. There's uncertainty. She takes redemptive action, attends AA meetings where she forms new attachments, new friends, who along with the friends and family who stuck by her after her imprisonment form a family for her. She eventually marries. Most significantly, she grows up. Over the twenty-plus years of the story, beginning in 1980, she develops a strength of character, a strength of being, a loving compassion for herself and others, including a raffish and devoted former lover, a young gay AA confidante and close friend, who gets HIV/AIDS, and others who she is able to see the beauty within, and the flaws, as she sees and accepts her own imperfections. She practices fidelity to her marriage despite her encounter with a man who almost sweeps her away. She's loyal and supportive of friends and family; gaining strength and learning to trust her own voice and her intuition. Patsy becomes a self-actualizing person.

My one significant dislike of the book was the author's writing of dialog without quotation marks. It was challenging, confusing and made for unnecessary work for me. 

"Blame", in short, is a quiet and intimate look into what makes life worth living, how does one live with a burden of responsibility which could incapacitate so many, and what is important about being in the world, and with other people.