Trading Dreams at Midnight by Dianne McKinney Whetstone is APOOO’s August BOM.  Discussion will start on Sunday, so I’m fervishly reading to finish the book.  I’m about halfway finished, still enjoying this read, although thus far their has been mixed reactions among APOOO readers.  Provided below is bits from an earlier e-mail conversation about TDatM.  Note spoilers included.

Favorable Review:

I am going to jump in, right now in fact, while this is fresh in my mind…

I liked it for a number of reasons, I also loved the languid style,

I also cared about and understood the characters…

Nan made a bad man decision based on many things and held on way past the time she probably should have – happens all the time and many times the generations pay for that…

I also understood and felt for Freeda’s mental illness, an illness that compelled her to run and act out…also something that happens all the time…

The girls Neena and Trish were products of their environments. Neena needed attention and understood that negative attention beats the heck out of no attention and I also felt that she needed and chose to be connected to her mother any way she could, through emulation…

Trish on the other hand wanted to be normal and did all she could to be that…while holding tight to her sister…

They reminded me of ‘real’ people I know and those are the stories that grab me…Did I enjoy as much as Blues Dancing, a personal favorite, no…but I did enjoy…

Unfavorable

I, too, have been a fan of her past works and understand her M.O….but for some reason this book was extremely slow(er) in pace and plot, even for her.    Where/what was supposed to be the climax?   With so much detail on the streets/geography of Philly, I felt like I could draw a map or work for Rand-McNally.  I kept waiting for some “action” or an epiphany of sorts — instead it was a series of elongated flashbacks that mostly reinforced what we already knew about the characters.  Neena, Trish, and Nan are the most “boring/forgettable” characters I’ve met in a long time, and even the satellite characters were dull.   Was it Gina?, Nan’s best friend, who was very colorful…I’d like to have seen more of her….but unfortunately we didn’t.    

There were aspects I liked:  the younger Nan and Alfred – their flashback episodes were more interesting to me.  I “got” the symbolism and hidden nuances behind the color (especially pink), I got the Little Bo Peep and Lost Sheep message, the be-careful-what-you-pray for lesson (re: Alfred), and even the guardian-angels-in-the kindness-of-strangers notice.  She did a good job using various literary techniques to layer in those lessons…but it still wasn’t enough for me.  If it wasn’t an Amazon Vine Voice book, I would have definitely skimmed to get through it.  Instead I read every word and it was laborious to do so.   

I was not endeared to any of the characters — they Nan and Neena came off as being rather shallow, selfish, and manipulative where the supposed darling/sweetheart/perfect Trish ended up reading like an afterthought —  honestly, I could care less about her pregnancy.  I couldn’t understand Neena, nor did I “like” her as a character, so following her around the streets of Philly as she tried to hustle her way to Trish, the next con, and back to Nanny’s, did absolutely nothing for me, but wear me out.  They kept referencing how she was “smart” but she kept doing non-smart things and was a terrible con artist.  I wanted her out of her misery and fast…by any means necessary.

I won’t go into the specifics as I know others are still reading, so I’ll wait until next week for more comments. 

I actually rated this a 2.5, but opted to bump down to a 2 for Amazon.

There you have it…two opposing views regarding Trading Dreams at Midnight by Dianne McKinney Whetstone.  As for me, I’m currently holding at a 4 for this book but who knows what the last 150 pages will bring.  However, I hope that since I’ve had to wait so long between books from Whetstone that she will live up to my expectations and not let me down.

In the meantime, here’s a tune to listen to and ruminate on until I return…after I finish reading the book.

Runaway Child, Running Wild by the Temptations 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Did you or do you plan to read Trading Dreams at Midnight by Dianne McKinney Whetstone?

Can you read spoilers for a book and still pick up the book to read it ?

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