Do you have ever have a stack of books by your bed (or maybe
somewhere else in your home) that you want to read, but none of them appeal to
you at that specific moment when you have finished one and are looking for another?
I had read The Angry Buddhist and wasn’t quite ready to be
finished with those characters. As I reviewed the pile of books that I had
ordered with such enthusiasm they just weren’t striking the same excitement with me now
that I was ready to select one as my next read. I wasn’t sure if I was having some kind of book
hangover or what. So I started poking around on the NY Times Book Review, my
recommendations at Amazon, and even a few blogs I regularly enjoy.
When I had found a recommendation that held some promise, I
pulled out the trusty Kindle (gotta love instant gratification, right?) and
ordered When We Were Romans. Given that the last time I followed the recommendation from Joanna from A Cup of Jo for a
book, I wasn’t disappointed I thought I’d take her up on another one.
This is the second book I’ve read where the author has opted to
have a child serve as the narrator for the story. Let me just put this out
there. It worked in The Room, but I was put off by it in this book. I’ll explain.
The narrator, Lawrence, is quite an ordinary little boy. You learn of his
love for Legos and Hotweheels. He shares his infatuation with Roman history and
space. He also shares all of his thoughts, including memories, fears, and
excitement. The entire book consists of
his misspelled and inconsistent punctuation as he takes you through his road
trip to Rome and the adventures once there with an annoying little sister and a
mother, who is a tad on the paranoid side.
Where is really lost me and almost, I said almost, caused me
to put it down forever was Lawrence’s stream of consciousness. However, like any lover
of books and a story, I had to know how everything resolved itself so I plowed
along.
This isn’t a book I would recommend given my frustration
with Lawrence as the sole narrator. I wanted to go through with a red pen and
fix all the misspellings and grammatical errors. I also wanted to just shut off
his random thoughts as I often skipped many pages to get back to the actual
story of why he was in Rome with his sister and mother. That said, if you want a book where the
author takes a daring approach to telling the story, then this may be worth a
read.
