Review: The Sentimentalists

The Sentimentalists by Johanna Shively Skibsrud
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

In 2010 Johanna Skibsrud won the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the youngest author to date to take the coveted literary award, for her debut novel, The Sentimentalists.

My own experience of The Sentimentalists was not entirely positive. There are a few moments of poetic writing and beautiful insight; but overall character development often ran to obscurity and confusion, so that it was difficult to connect relationships and individuals. Geographic locations were often muddled, as were nationalities and the justification of characters’ actions.

And while this is a tender tribute to Skibsrud’s own father’s experience during the Vietnam War, there are moments when his wartime memories are revealed, only to devolve into a philosophical daydreaming that didn’t rise much above the navel. To be honest, I closed the book and remained unsure what, exactly, had been the point of the novel. But maybe that was the point. If so, it’s the most subtle and obscure of rationales I’ve come across in some time. And this from the reader who adored Rushdie’s Satanic Verses.

In the end, I remain quite confused as to why this novel merited the Giller.

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