<\/p>\n
The life of a struggling farmer is a slog: You drag yourself out of bed at ungodly hours, struggle against the morning cold, service the animals and attempt to service yourself, on and on for days, months and into years. Everything is repetitive, everything is menial. So is Jennifer Acker\u2019s new novel \u201cSurrender.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSurrender\u201d follows Lucy, a woman solo-managing her family\u2019s New England goat farm, while tackling many common problems for a middle-aged woman in a small town: a marriage ravaged by her aging husband\u2019s dementia, falling in love with her high school best friend, Sandy, all while processing her friends\u2019 lives over farm-grown meals. It\u2019s a novel of simplistic, mild problems that are typically resolved within a few short chapters. It\u2019s a great \u201ccozy\u201d genre read, but doesn\u2019t go much further.<\/p>\n
Acker\u2019s writing bleeds with heavy exposition, reading much too simply. She doesn\u2019t let you draw your own conclusions or let anything sit unresolved for long. This surely makes the book \u201ccozy,\u201d as you know you won\u2019t have to stress about something too heavily, but lowers the stakes too much in an already low-stakes plot. Nearly 300 pages of \u2014 admittedly pretty nerve-racking \u2014 goat farming and financial problems can only grip you for so long, and lacked the intrigue created by drawn-out conflicts.<\/p>\n
The simplicity of the novel isn\u2019t just in the conflicts, but also in the developments of Lucy\u2019s life. For a woman in her middle age, a time known for<\/a> its struggles in making new friends, Lucy makes them far too easily. In multiple moments throughout the book, she meets someone for the first time and engages in some light small talk, yet by the next chapter, that person is suddenly at her house, helping her work on the farm or discussing intimate details of their lives. These relationships develop too quickly to feel believable and create characters who come across as underdeveloped. The payoff is too immediate, unsatisfying and requires a little suspension of disbelief.<\/p>\n