Positive[PANK]When it came to Anna Moschovakis’s Eleanor, or the Rejection of the Progress of Love, I found a book I nearly imbibed. Most of us do when reading something we can relate to. The book is, in essence, about existential angst of our zeitgeist. However, for me there was delight in reading about sex, sexuality, and the first steps of mid-life during that zeitgeist. So few art forms capture this period of life well from a woman’s POV ... It’s not a perfect book. The last quarter frays into a series of parcels about as long and substantial as a Tweet. Moschovakis might use these staticky fits and starts to parallel social media or our minds on social media, but it was utterly skimmable. Nor did I appreciate the inundation of artistic references; the ubiquity of these came to feel like a crutch for the author, akin to David Foster Wallace’s footnotes ... Despite these minor flaws, Moschovakis’s Eleanor, or the Rejection of the Progress of Love offers literary and plot interests on most every page. It’s a book meant for those of us whose sparkle is wearing off and whose lives are beginning to resemble something in a Camus novel.
