A Simple Plan

A Simple Plan by Scott Smith

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I didn’t expect to read Smith’s first novel so soon after having finished The Ruins, but that’s how my holds came through at the library. I don’t like reading too much of one author all at once, because it starts to temper the way I see things, and affect my own moods. A Simple Plan seems to be as dark and as hopeless as The Ruins, so I quit reading it about a quarter of the way into the book.

The book is well written, even though Smith focuses so much on the minutiae of his story, but by the point in the novel where I quit, I had no sympathy for any of the main characters. The narrator started out as a likeable enough guy, but after the simple plan becomes not so simple, he’s as ruthless as the secondary characters. He’s so focused on the inscrutable plan that he risks just about everything else in his life — including his family — to pursue it. Maybe that’s the premise of the story, though, that money corrupts. Still, I get too much of this sort of thing from the real world to want to experience it in my entertainment, too.

This is going to be a short month if I don’t find something that interests me.

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