The Dork of Cork
By: Chet Raymo / Narrated By: Donal Donnelly
Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
Unique protagonist, gorgeous prose… oh my… how UN-engaging…
To give the poorly-titled The Dork of Cork its due: This was a split-decision kinda book for Big Sis and me. I soooo wanted it off our plates, have the discussion, call it DONE, and then move onto the next audiobook that I (Tho’ behind on listening, moved MOUNTAINS to get it done in time for said discussion) griped and quibbled m’ way to a not tooooo terribly late Chat. Big Sis looked at me and said, “You hated it, didn’t you?”
Cuz, see, I was soooo DONE with it, made not a single verbal hesitation in my Let’s Get This Puppy Done intro to the audiobook. But it’s like this: I didn’t haaaaate it; it’s just that I was so very very distractible whilst giving it a Go.
-AND-
I kept likening it to The World According to Garp which had me even MORE unengaged as the Listen continued. I mean, how emotionally-involved can a person be when they keep finding themselves thinking, “Hmmmm… Uber-Sexuality that’s comPLETEly detached” and “Hmmmm… Same obsessive contemplation of the Mother-figure” and such-all? I mean, it DID keep me from thinking, Oh Jeez, How I Haaaaate This, but it didn’t foster any chance to think, Wow, It’s Incredible How Very Much I Feel For Frank Right Now…!
Frank Bois is a 43-year old 43-inch tall man. He’s the son of Bernadette, a woman who stowed-away on a troopship heading back from France to the US. Once discovered, the 16-year old Bernadette is unceremoniously dumped in Cork, alone, just the clothes on her back, and somewhat verrrrry knocked-up after having shared her body to a varied assortment of young American soldiers. In her womb? The genetic anomaly of Frank, who will suffer from Dwarfism (And Suffer is the key word).
As one who is NOT Beautiful, Frank grows up as an admirer of All Things Beautiful, the stars, the sky, and oh definitely yessss: Women. Women he knows he will never have (Even a prostitute tells him to get lost). His suffering, his Uber-Intelligent Musings, lead him to pen a somewhat autobiographical novel that sets him on the road to Fame and Fortune.
And that’s about it. It’s Musing about Musing; it’s a huuuuge focus on Sexuality, Sex that doesn’t mean anything; it’s a focus on what it was like to grow up with Bernadette as a most definitely sexual creature who has absolutely no use for the men she beds most imaginatively. Best? It’s a Pondering of the Cosmos, the Universe, the Night Sky. When Frank alludes to the stars and the stories they tell, this story really shines. When he drones on and on and on about the ways, the individuals, Bernadette has sex with?
BORING. Because, you see, she doesn’t give a rat’s patoot, and yeh yeh yeh, there’s an earlier trauma and p’raps some PTSD that makes her detached, so good for author Chet Raymo for making there be a reason for her detachment. It’s just that, yeh yeh yeh (Again), reasons and all, detachment has to be written in a superior manner lest we the listeners feel juuuust as detached as the character.
Yeee-AWN, I was feeling nary a bit for Bernadette, simply mused how Frank as a young child and witness to this all might be affected by it. I felt not a smidgen of pity for Bernadette (Okay, maybe just a smidgen, seeing as the trauma was FINALLY chucked in, late in the story), only considered how crappy it was for a mom to do that to her kid.
Further, Frank, to me, was only baaaarely more than a shallow cardboard cutout character when he was overjoyed by the Universe, etc. Other than that, it was, like: Whazzis? Frank’s ogling yet another woman again, in the name of Beauty? Can we say, Not Lovely -but- Creepy?
Donal Donnelly does a super job with the narration, adding a bit o’ whimsy to Frank’s voyeurism that kept me from finding Frank just flat-out disgusting and even a trifle personable and interesting. And Donnelly also brings Bernadette’s many suitors to life, even if he can’t flesh out Bernadette given how she’s written. Bravo, sir, and thank you so much for doing what was in your power for this book!
Split decision here as Big Sis truly Truly TRULY liked the story. She found Bernadette to be a woman fully in charge of her own destiny (Me? I kept ho-humming her constant default setting of: Sleep With This One, That One, The Other One). And it sounded like Sis appreciated Frank and found him to be marvelously in tune with All Things Glorious And Lovely, whether it was a woman or the Universe. Plus, we’d listened to a heavy-duty Listen, and Bernadette came off like, here, a woman with knowledge of herself and what might be her best Commodity, rather than getting raped and damned for all time (We were listening to Pandora’s Jar, and ain’t nothing like Mythology to make one rear back in horror over how women were treated/perceived, ya know?).
So, I s’pose… ‘tis up to you, dear Accomplice, to decide for yourself.
Me? I’m TOTALLY relieved I picked this up during a Sale. At 12 1/2-hours, this was time I coulda spent elsewhere… so it’s very much: I didn’t spend an Arm and a Leg for this, huzzah huzzah huzzah. Just time I coulda spent watching cookies bake in a closed car in Texas heat.
Relatively Scintillating, ya know…?
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