The zombie round always throws weird little twists into the mix. Last year, my picks to face off in the finals were eliminated before they got to the finals but re-emerged as zombies. This year, one was eliminated in an upset, but will face my other pick for the finals in tomorrow’s round, meaning today is just a bonus face-off that does not have any connection with my predictions.
Both books have their own touches of whimsy about them, but—oversimplifying and distorting to an immoral extent—it feels a bit to me as if Martyr! takes a serious matter and treats it with whimsy while Margo’s Got Money Troubles takes a whimsical situation and treats it with seriousness. I’ve repeatedly commented on my dislike of the formal experimentation that Thorpe engages in with the book and I really feel like the book would have been stronger with that metatextual matter stripped out. Martyr! has its own difficulties, particularly the unlikely coincidence at the center of its plot, but aren’t all plots about unlikely coincidences in the end? Given this, I feel that Martyr! is the better of the two books and better suited for the final round on Monday.
My judgment on the judgment
I found Ivy Pochoda’s account of reading the two books in this matchup enjoyable reading and nodded in agreement with her. While she had little to say about the failed structural issues of Margo’s Got Money Troubles she did notice something I failed to comment on, which is that the story largely wrapped itself up maybe a little too neatly (which Pochoda attributes at least in part to the long arm of Hollywood). I do think that this is a book likely to see a big Hollywood adaptation, certainly much more so than Martyr!
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