Rave on, James Frey

I was hoping that Katerina would mark a return to form for James Frey, whose books had, in my estimation, gone steadily downhill since A Million Little Pieces. I started reading and I thought it was, wasn't, was, wasn't, was.

As I turned the pages, the narrator's bad-boy bravado quickly wore thin. Likewise his distain for ordinary workaday life and his burn-it-down posturing. Through it all, his insecurity and self-loathing came shining through. He couldn't hide it and didn't try.

Even as he worshiped excess, intensity, and passion, he yearned for peace. His grandiose ambitions belied his longing for domestic bliss.

Of course Katerina, a novel named for a woman, is at its core a love story. Both Frey and his narrator (who he pointedly intertwines) are romantics. But then so am I, and it's the love story that makes the book, despite its many glaring faults, worth reading.

I both loved and hated it.