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Monday, January 18, 2010

Books Sorry, Don't Bother with The Kingdom of Ohio

Posted by on Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 1:34 PM

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On Saturday, I wrote about an author named Matthew Flaming. Flaming was at Third Place Books, reading from his debut novel, The Kingdom of Ohio. I apologized for not having read the book yet. "I wish I had read Ohio in time for this reading," I said, adding, "It looks like something amazing. I'm sorry I didn't get to this book before this event."

Well, I read Ohio over the weekend, and I am now telling you, dear reader: Don't bother. The premise of the book sounds fanciful in a nice, nerdy, literary sci-fi kind of way—it's a time-traveling love story that involves Nikolai Tesla, Thomas Edison, and J.P. Morgan, the construction of New York City's subways, and a royal family that stakes a claim in Ohio—but it's really just deadly dull.

Flaming has done research into the real-life characters he has woven into the novel, but he doesn't make them characters. They just bumble through the book, excised whole from this biography or that one. The narrator of the story, an old man who spackles the novel with the most boring footnotes to ever appear in fiction, isn't at all interesting, either. There's nothing in the central mystery to entice the reader on; the only thing that will push you forward is sheer force of will.

If you'd like to read a good novel about Tesla, I'd like to direct you instead to Samantha Hunt's debut novel The Invention of Everything Else, which came out a couple of years ago. Flaming should read Hunt's novel as a crash course on how to take someone who was real and transform them into a character while still keeping the essential truth of the man. Avoid The Kingdom of Ohio at all costs; life's too short for an unexceptional debut novel.

 

Comments (6) RSS

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yelahneb 1
You FOOL - I've already had the book cover tattooed on my back! I'll never trust you again
Posted by yelahneb http://www.strangebutharmless.com on January 18, 2010 at 2:00 PM
2
Good to know - I was waiting for your review.

Posted by Patti on January 18, 2010 at 2:07 PM
3
@1: Hee! You made me smile on an otherwise unremarkable and somewhat shitty day.
Posted by Gloria on January 18, 2010 at 2:21 PM
Toad in the Hole 4
Yeah, folks over at goodreads seem to agree with you: great idea, incredibly poor execution. bummer.
Posted by Toad in the Hole on January 18, 2010 at 5:14 PM
5
My husband says that this book was done first and better by Mark Helprin in A Winters Tale. Wondered if anyone else has read that or thought the same?
Posted by gilda62 on January 28, 2010 at 9:49 AM
6
i agree, it is rubbish, bought it in an english language section of a spanish bookstore, fed up with not having anything to read on holiday. awful, awful writing.
Posted by tesla rocks on April 2, 2011 at 2:48 PM

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