Book Club Recap: An Unfinished Story by Boo Walker
After reading several works of Literary Fiction, I wanted to choose something a bit more commercial in execution, preferably Women’s Fiction with a strong romantic thread (after all, February is the month of love!)
An Unfinished Story offered an interesting premise: a grieving widow asks an acclaimed writer, suffering from writer’s block, to finish her late husband’s book. The execution was, however… debatable.
STRUCTURE:
The book is following the basic three-act structure. In the first act, we get to see Claire and her inability to move on after her husband’s death three years beforehand, and Whitaker, once critically acclaimed writer, who is on the verge of giving up writing after a ten-year-long writer’s block that cost him, among other things, his marriage. Claire, finding the manuscript is the inciting incident (10% into the book)—with finding it, an idea is planted inside her head that if she gets this MS finished, she’ll somehow find closure.
Claire asking Whitaker to finish her husband’s manuscript marks the beginning of the second act (17% into the book)—because Whitaker’s first book inspired David to write in the first place, she embarks on the journey of convincing Whitaker to take the ghostwriting project on.
The midpoint is when Whitaker finally accepts to work on this project (44% into the book). But as he writes it, another problem arises—he can polish David’s words, but his writer’s block is preventing him from figuring out what the ending should be.
Toward the end of second act (the dark night of the soul, 64% into the book) he gives up, but then finds a picture of David with a boy, presumably the one who inspired the book. Finding that boy becomes essential not only for finishing the book but also for getting Claire her closure too. And so, the third act is focused on finding the boy, and basically getting to a point where Claire, Whitaker, and the boy (in foster care) become a family.
The structural issue here is obvious: the author started writing one story (about a grieving widow asking a writer’s block suffering writer to write her husband’s book) but ended up writing another one—where the focus is more on the unfinished book and its protagonist, Orlando, and the real boy behind it, Oliver.
Given its ending, the book’s beginning could have been tightened up: the inciting incident (finding the MS) should’ve come sooner (no later than 5% into the book), the first act could’ve been Claire insisting that Whitaker wrote the book, his decision to do it marking the begining of act two (at roughly 25%); midpoint could’ve been figuring out that Orlando from David’s book was a real boy (at around 45-50%), and finding him could’ve marked the beginning of the third act (at around 75%), leaving the last 25% to tie loose ends.
PACING:
For all the reasons stated above, the pacing was considerably off.
The opening lagged a lot, and felt a bit contrived. There were chapters after chapters showing Claire’s grief and Whitaker’s messed-up life before the MS even came into play in any meaningful way. Then there were chapters after chapters of Claire talking Whitaker into finishing David’s book, and him, refusing to do it. Then him accepting to read David’s chapters, and then, declining again. Then admitting to lying he’s read them, then actually reading them, and liking them and then, declining again… Since we knew from the get-go he would take this project on (it’s the whole premise of the novel), all this push and pull didn’t seem necessary and felt quite repetitive. His acceptance of the project should’ve come much sooner than 44% into the book.
And because the opening lagged, the ending had to be rushed. Finding out that Orlando was a real boy in David’s life, finding him, getting to know him and his life circumstances, and making the three of them a family… it all happens in the third act (the last 35% of the book). The romantic thread between Claire and Whitaker is suddenly dropped, the connection between all of them—including Whitaker’s hard-headed father who is suddenly warm and caring with no real explanation as to how that came around—feels rushed at best.
One of the scenes we thought was missing, given the romantic nature of this book, was the sex scene. In slow burning romances, the sex scene isn’t there just for the release of the built-up sexual tension. The sex is a tool of showing the ultimate surrender of the lovers to one another. So, when I say we expected the sex scene, what I really mean is, the story missed the I fully surrender myself to you scene.
On the other hand, a lot of us were relieved that there wasn’t a sex scene, worried how the author would have handled it. First, because he is a man, and second, because he is prone to using clichés in writing (more on that later on). And we’ve all seen those hilarious threads on the internet, of men writing women, and clichéd sex scenes!
CONFLICT
This book lacked clear conflict. This is a work of Women’s Fiction, so we’re not expecting explosions, or world distruction; interpersonal conflict would be enough. The author sets it up nicely: Claire’s agenda clashes with Whitaker’s, Whitaker’s agenda clashes with that of his parents, and there is an embedded conflict in the boy himself, as well as the fact that David didn’t tell Claire about him.
However, when the conflict can finally come to fruition, the author cuts his dears quite a lot of slack—Whitaker and his dad find a common ground without so much as a spoken word; the boy accepts David’s death, and is immediately willing to accept the fact that David’s wife is in a relationship with another man, Whitaker’s parents are happy to treat the boy as if he were their own blood, even Claire’s estranged mom flies down from Chicago… And so, the window for conflict closes, only to be forcefully built in places where it doesn’t belong (for instance, Claire’s meltdown, when she sends Whitaker off—only to make up with him the very next morning).
SETTING AS A CHARACTER:
The author was keen on writing Florida, especially St. Petersburg, as a character. Some members, especially those who have been to St. Pete’s appreciated these descriptions and thought they were very lifelike. But most of us felt like he missed the mark for two main resons:
— the setting didn’t play an integral part in the story. When thinking back to the stories that featured setting as a character, Where the Crowdads sing and The Marsh King’s Daughter come to mind. In both these books, the marsh played a pivotal part not only in the plot (many times complicating or helping these charaters’ agendas) but in their character development as well. Kya and Helena were both shaped by the marsh and their lives in it. Same goes for Iris in True Places. She is a product of the years spent alone in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
This book put a lot of emphasis on the setting but in a way that didn’t really affect the characters. Would Claire and Whitaker have been exactly the same had the author placed them in New York or LA, or even Santa Lucia? I would argue, yes.
— the descriptions were, for the most part, generic. The descriptions, even of specific places, lacked specificity. The beach could have been any other beach, the clear blue sky didn’t differ from any other blue sky anywhere else in the world. Where there was specificity (the history of some buildings in St. Pete’s) it didn’t feel connected to the story (why tell us the history of these buildings? How did these exact buildings relate to the characters?)
In terms of descriptions, we haven’t seen a lot of what we couldn’t read on Wikipedia or see by virtually driving around on Google Maps.
When creating a sense of place in a book, being specific is essential. The attachment to a place comes from being deeply connected to it so that it employs your emotions in a way they couldn’t employ any other person’s or visitor’s.
Lily King’s Writers&Lovers is a good example of this—Boston encapsulated and reflected so much of Casey’s interiority. She showed us Boston you can’t know if you’ve never been there, and tied it back to Casey’s emotional states (for instance, the geese in the park reflected her nostalgia and grief).
CHARACTERIZATION
One thing where we mostly agreed the author did a good job was creating plausible backstories for both protagonists. Whitaker had issues with seeking approval from his emotionally unavailable dad (a Vietnam war veteran). Claire’s grief stemmed from losing the love of her life—a man she had met at fourteen, and with whom she reconnected at twenty-five. She also struggled with abandonment issues because of her mom, and with grief for losing her dad.
The problem was, most of the character building had been delivered through a lot of TELLING, instead of SHOWING. There was a lot of repetitiveness too—we were being told some of these things more than once.
Ultimately, we agreed that the whole thread with Whitaker’s dad was resolved too easily; the man whose reserved demeanor had marked Whitaker’s life, suddenly changing into a warm and accepting person as soon as Whitaker cleaned up his act.
We also agreed that there were some issues with writing Claire from the male perspective. For instance, she knew the exact make of every car and boat, but she didn’t know what a curveball in baseball was. Mentioning the convertible over and over again drove more than one of our member’s nuts! Personally, I found it jarring when Claire came home and ‘threw on a kimono.’ Who wears a kimono at home? I’m sure it was supposed to show Claire’s artistic flair, but to me, it seemed a bit contrived.
When the author switched from Claire’s to Whitaker’s POV for the first time, it was obvious that writing male characters came more naturally to him. Whitaker came alive on the page with much less effort than Claire did. In fact, maybe the author did too good of a job with Whitaker in the opening scenes; some of our members thought he was so gross that they had issues buying into the romantic development of the story later on.
DIALOGUES, CLICHES, DISTANCE:
Especially in the very beginning (and especially in Claire’s POV), there were a lot of dialogues that didn’t ring true. Her conversations with Didi were especially problematic; too much on the nose, and brimming with clichés.
There was a lot of distance in the narrative voice, that didn’t allow for that immersive effect of a story. A lot of it was telling us how the characters feel (sad, lonely, angry), instead of trying to show the emotion at hand. And also, telling us the characters’ circumstances, backstories, quirks and personalities, instead of allowing them to appear on the page organically.
SOCIAL COMMENTARY—FOSTER CARE:
In the last third of the book, the author delved into the issues of foster care. In the acknowledgment section, he stated he’d done a thorough research to make this part believable. He also said his intention was to raise awareness of this issue, and to encourage people to help these kids if they can.
In our discussion, this was the point of most contention.
One of our members has worked in the child protection and is familiar with foster care. Her impression was that the author gave an embellished depiction of what it’s really like: the boy in the story has risen above his circumstances of being abused and abandoned and gone to have good grades and dreams of going to Duke. In reality, most of these kids never recover from the traumas they went through: their academic success is hindered by years of missed or poor schooling. They struggle with PTSD and other conditions. Most foster homes aren’t happy places with a pool and PlayStation.
So given the author’s proclaimed wish to raise awareness and get people to help, this depiction might have done more harm than good: the reader can walk away from reading this book thinking Why should I go out of my way to help these kids, when the system obviously works? What would I be saving them from—houses with pool and Duke?
In the worst case scenario, this book can even cause prejudice: If Oliver was able to rise above his issues, then any kid should, too. So if any kid in foster care isn’t thriving, it’s because they’re not trying hard enough to do better.
However, some members disagreed, saying this was a light book, and so it tackled the heavy issues in a light way. But even if it is handled in a light and embellished way, it might still help raise awareness of this issue among the audience who consumes these kinds of books. They welcomed this book giving a voice to an invisible population of foster kids, their caretakers, and people working in the system.
CONCLUSION
Wrapping up this recap, I will repeat the sentiment of most of our members: the premise sounded intriguing, but the execution, at least in some aspects, was lacking. While it is safe to say that many of our members are drawn to the Literary/Upmarket part of the divide, most of us will still appreciate a work of Commercial fiction if it’s well done.
This goes to show that the quality of writing isn’t what separates Literary from Commercial fiction, as it is often implied: quality of writing is an essential ingredient in ALL writing. On sentence level, this author used a lot of cliches, repetitiveness and telling, which, ultimately, diminished our reading experience.
Hope you enjoyed reading this recap! Until next time—keep safe and keep writing!
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Have you read this book? Did you like it? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!
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