The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese (#1,132) has sat on my bedside table for years now, waiting for just the right moment to read it. I remember that Michael Paterniti's nonfiction book caused quite a bit of stir when it first came out almost a decade ago. I figured a long plane ride would be the perfect place to delve into it. My first clue should have been when our section of an international flight had an entertainment systems failure. No movies, no attendant call button, but worst of all, no overhead reading light during an eight hour flight!
Once I did have a chance to start reading it, it was so full of footnotes upon footnotes that I had a hard time keeping track of the main story line. In retrospect, that might have been intentional, since when it comes right down to it, it's the author's obsession with a story about cheese which prevented him for years from bothering to find out what the rest of the story was. He even moved his entire family to a remote Spanish village for a year in pursuit of his own personal fairy tale.
In the end, he was totally taken in by a fabulist. There essentially was no there there. I sure wish I had the time spent waiting for something concrete to happen in this book back. I have absolutely no regrets in leaving this book behind in France. It was not worth lugging it home again. Read it yourself if you must, but don't say I didn't warn you!
No comments:
Post a Comment