Jack CBR5 - Paint it Black, Janet Fitch

I loved White Oleander, Janet Fitch's first novel. It's the story of a young girl in foster care because her mother murdered a former lover. The pose are phenomenal, the story it tight, and the characters leap off the page. Her sophomore effort, Paint it Black, unfortunately, does not.

"Paint it Black" tells the story of 19-year-old protagonist, Josie Tyrell. Her life is pretty fucked, except she's in love with Michael, tortured artist and son of a famous pianist.  Unfortunately, Michael's offs himself. His suicide bring Josie and Michael's mother together and despite their differences and marred past, they find a common bond in being the only people who truly feel the void left at Michael's passing. This could have been a lot of things. Suicide leaves so much room for reflection, pain, anger, etc. Unfortunately the reader doesn't get most of those things. Instead the reader gets the same descriptive phrases repeated ad naseum from the first page to the last. A protagonist, who spends the better part of the book wandering around in an alcoholic stupor trying to figure out... well, it's not always clear what she's trying to figure out.

In the end, the repetition and the stupor may be intentional. A distraction from the lack of character development and lack of compelling story. There are still moments where Fitch exercises her prowess with the language, but in this novel they are too few and far between.