More like Unctuous Metcalfe

Oh_my_God, what a bore!!! The only good thing I can say about The Natural History of Uncas Metcalfe by Betsey Osborne (sorry, Bets) is that I read it to the bitter--and it is--end. Why a writer as adept with words as Betsey Osborne, would pen a book as hopeless and frustrating as this, is a mystery to me. When NHUM (and that's how the "hero" goes through life) comes out in May, I'd advise that you not add it to your summer reading list, unless you enjoy stories about stubborn, self-centered, weak and inscrutable older men. Thing is, this man Uncas, is supposed to be 65, behaves as if he were 80, and from my calculations, he shouldn't have been much more than 55. Nonetheless, he and his wife trade quips that my parents, in their 80's, might have employed...had they been less cool.

I don't know. Maybe Betsey is older and expressing her exasperation with "kids" these days, with their proclivity towards bad grammar and worse manners? Even at my age, those things bother me, but were I to publicly bitch about them, I think I'd use a more engaging vehicle. But it gets worse: Uncas routinely ignores and emotionally shuts out his wife, who's laid up in bed on account of an accident at a book fair (If you've never been to one, I guess you wouldn't understand just how dangerous they can be.), but he makes a friend and confidant of a young woman whom he then gets mildly skeeved out by when he discovers she's a lesbian. He has unnerving encounters with a local nursery owner who's peeved because Uncas wouldn't help him grow pot to ease his dying father's pain, but who treats Uncas's wife with nothing but respect and kindness. It just didn't make sense to me.

In its defense, it got some great blurbs from Stephen J. Dubner, author of Freakonomics; Roxana Robinson, author of Sweetwater; and Katharine Weber, author of The Little Women.
I will at least agree that it was well-written. The impotence of Uncas Metcalfe seeped out of every page of the book. I'm just not sure why I spent hours of my precious time reading about someone with few, if any, redeeming qualities, who to the last word, never seems to learn from his mistakes.

There are just too many other books to read...

~Fischlipps