Alexandra Kaste
This book was almost soooo good. And there are some things it nails. It's interesting, quickly paced, and has some great dialogue (even though I felt like the author was patting himself on the back for recreating early teen speech patterns) and an understanding of the society in which it's set. Also shout out to the main character for being as afraid of insects as I am. But dang there were some clunky parts. Don't you just love it when writers explain their metaphors explicitly? “It's like I'm batman and that means I have to be brave because overcoming your fears is a great coming of age theme” (exact quote (really)). And for a book that claims to see its characters as three dimensional people, the portrayal of a lot of these people is remarkably caricaturish. That mom though. I have a pet peeve when writers reference other books. Loved all those super obvious references to To Kill a Mockingbird. It's like when pretentious teens name drop bands to jack some of their cool (and I'm in a position to know because that's what I do).
This book probably deserves a three, but it was a fun read and the flaws were only obvious after reflection. They didn't really interfere with the reading experience. If only the author would just let his protagonist be without low key inserting his philosophy and musings into this absurdly precocious 13 year old.
If I had to describe this book, it would be To Kill a Mockingbird if Atticus Finch was a raging-alcoholic communist. I have no bones with the writing: nice, abrupt prose and skillful character sketches, if sometimes the pacing was a bit repetitious and slow.
But dear God, I finished the book and my only thought was how much time I'd wasted on it. The theme? Uh, don't try to be smart if you're poor and live in the South, I guess? Yeahhh, and that was about it.
I wanted to like the characters, like, any of them. But I couldn't. Horrible things happened to them and I didn't care. I WANTED TO! I PROMISE! I felt like McCullers tries to make them so three-dimensional that they ended up like caricatures. What could have been a strongly empathetic portrait of those looking for education in a backward society kept me at a distance where all I could see was how faintly ridiculous their pretensions were.
McCullers and Harper both looked at the small Southern town, but where McCullers only saw the grime and backwardness of the townspeople, Harper saw hope in the individuals.
Wow, I forgot how much I love Chaim Potok. The last book I read of his, the painfully lugubrious Gift of Asher Lev, kind of colored my memories of his other books, making me forget their beautiful symbolism and character work and emphasizing their poor pacing and multitude of solitary, ponderous walks. But he has risen from the ashes in my mind. This book is rife with with what makes him so memorable; he marries what initially seems to be a niche struggle and ends up making powerful, universal statements with it. So glad that my library's poor selection forced me to read this.
I'm very ashamed to say that i didn't love this book as much as the critics, literally every end of the year list, and my mom said I was supposed to. Maybe I'm just perverse. I really did enjoy the writing style and the two main characters but I never felt like I really engaged with it.
When I found out it took the guy ten years to write, I understood my issue: it's too darn cleanly written. Everything is as perfectly placed as the machinery this guy's so fond of eulogizing. And it pisses me off. I wanted some sort of spark, something that added a weird, unexpected dimension and threw a wrench into these flat little characters, who are all so conveniently obsessed with poetic pursuits.
Also, I just kept thinking of this as like the more political version of the invention of Hugo Cabret and honestly I liked that book better.
I also despise too explicit epilogues; I don't need to know how gross, old, and purposeless my spunky lil characters have gotten.
This is an extremely crabby review and I did actually enjoy this book so I'm giving it a four. But that's mainly so I don't bring down its exceptional rating. Heaven forbid.
Wow. How in the world did she tie this whole strange story up so perfectly? So many intricate layers and small inner stories that sort of obfuscated the real story: it's about a small boy trying to save his mother. But while these side stories could have detracted from the main one, somehow it actually added breadth and depth to the story.
The different narrative styles were great, and I just liked how the words looked on the page. It was exactly how the story of these people should have been told. Good job, Dewitt.
This review is jumbled but that's how the book is so get used to it.
Fascinating story of how a fairy tale would look in the real world. Nice and twisted with quite good atmosphere and an unreliable narrator thrown in to boot (although the supposed twist was pretty obvious). But although the narrator stands out, I think her sister is the real fascination. Here is someone that is supposedly sane who never even really comments on her sister's obvious insanity and only seems to notice it when the awful cousin Charles points it out. So pink and white and in the end pretty much as crazy as her unwashed, schitzo sister. The only weakness in the book is the one dimensional Charles and townspeople (but even that goes away once you consider that merricat narrates the book). Overall very interesting fable that's even more interesting when you find out the author was agoraphobic too.
No one writes characters like Bronte does. Not only does she create the magnificent (self?) portrait of Lucy Snowe–so passionate, so suppressed, so misunderstood–she also creates a fully fleshed out cast of strange, lovable (or not) characters. This is a beautiful book but do not undertake it lightly. Two and a half months after starting it, I'm just now crawling to the finish. 5 stars for my lovely Lucy but like two stars for the pathetic last page and like for all the parts spent examining the infinitely boring Dr. Graham. Bleh.
Ken Follett should not be allowed to continue writing. Two stars only because it was an easy read but, oh God, the man has a genius for stale, one-dimensional characters and predictable plots. It takes place during the plague and never once did I feel the terror of the situation. The deaths only happened to those that the story didn't really rely on and I honestly did not care once. Also, sexing up the middle ages should be a crime. Was there sex? Yes. Do we need a description of every one of the women's boobs and lots of inconsequential sex scenes? Aw heck no. Follett, please stop.
Very interesting studies in this book but I think he would have done better to structure it like freakonomics where there isn't an overarching purpose. Because after a while, I began to question it. “Really, Gladwell? The fact that people who are professional food testers aren't fooled by the coke pepsi challenge supports your blink thesis? (that despite everything being tied to it, I'm still not exactly sure what it is)
Okay, put this one down under the “don't let teen girls read this”–no unfounded aspersion on girls, just personal experience. First read: wow, how romantic and beautiful, in the midst of life we are in death, am I right, the suburbs sure are evocative. Interim: wow, death and teenage girls get romanticized a lot, that's really concerning, this book celebrates that, not cool, the male gaze sure is dangerous. Second read: OH THAT'S THE POINT, DUH, also the suburbs are still really evocative.
I wasn't changed by this book. It was well written (if occasionally bordering on pretentious) and I enjoyed reading it. It was hard to put down and while I read it, I felt I was being changed. But when I finished, nothing had really changed. Chbosky felt like he threw some wonderful characters (I'll give it that) into as many crap situations as he could think of and saw if they could bring some morality out of it. Perks was a well-constructed book with lovely characters that was just trying a little too hard.
This is truly literary candy. It was a joy to read and I had to ration it so I didn't devour it too quickly (the only other book I've had to do this with was a tree grows in Brooklyn so this is truly an honor). This is the first and only book I've found myself compulsively annotating mainly for vocabulary (also an honor).
This is a hard review for me because I can't honestly say that i liked it. There is no doubt that is masterfully written and a landmark in American drama. My issue is not with quality just with the content. The whole play feels very intrusive, like peeping through curtains. i couldn't shake the feeling that I just should not be witnessing something so intensely personal to the people in the play. In the beginning, Honey and Nick felt very much a part of the audience witnessing the cruel, twisted battles of George and Martha. The way George and Martha's games turned them from spectators to active participant was extremely disconcerting as an audience member, feeling that the same could easily happen to me.