Just Finished Reading Jane, Unlimited by Kristin Cashore

A few days ago, while browsing through Books-a-Million with Melissa, I noticed some young adult fantasy series on a table display.  One of them was Graceling, by an author named Kristin Cashore.  Being a fan of young adult books, I nevertheless didn't want to get myself committed to a long fantasy series, so I investigated this young writer's still-brief bibliography and discovered that she published in 2017 a standalone book titled Jane, Unlimited.  I just finished reading it, and, sad to say, discovered that it belongs to a category of works that I have put down in frustration after only partially reading them.  Yes, I did pick it back up again for the sake of attaining some closure to this reading task, but it was an overall unsatisfactory reading experience for me.  I then checked Goodreads and discovered that readers either thought this novel was a masterpiece or they likewise quit reading it long before the finish, panning it unmercifully.  For me, I'm somewhere in between the two extremes, deciding to go ahead and give it the old college try...oh well, now that I read it, I can now check it off my reading list!  I liked Cashore's writing style and she created a very compelling character in Jane, a young college dropout orphaned twice, first from her parents and then her Aunt Magnolia, who was mainly responsible for her raising.  Jane's friend Kiran invites her to stay over at Kiran's mansion of a home, called Tu Reviens, and Jane remembers her aunt once imploring her to accept any such invitation to that place.  It's a strange house with a lot of strange people, and soon after Jane arrives a stray dog decides to adopt her...it seems to have a sense of wisdom about guiding her around.  I liked the novel's setup with the mysterious house and characters, but the author decided to have the narrative split off into alternate stories that left me confused and, at times, angry.  Yet I have to admit that writing unhinged books isn't a new thing, and James Joyce, Kurt Vonnegut and Jonathan Swift achieved great renown for some of that kind of stuff...maybe Kristin Cashore was looking at them when she wrote this, who knows.  The problem I had with the alternative narratives was that sometimes the previous narrative "counted" and sometimes it didn't as the book progressed...there was no sense of the main character, Jane, achieving any sort of peace about her own life because before too long there would be a "reset" and it would all start over, with a completely different emphasis.  I didn't care for that, but you just might.  In any event, I greatly respect the author for writing this book and presenting some pretty interesting characters along the way...Jane's talent for creating artistic umbrellas was a good example...