Cat
Loss. Be it of a loved one, of one's identity, of one's life goals or desires, loss is sometimes made much harder when we are confronted with the fact that we actually didn't know what we lost as we thought we did - more often than not because we didn't want to know.
Please look after Mother is an interesting study of grief and a beautiful portrait of an amazingly strong woman, painted with negative strokes.
The book is well written, which annoys me, because the stories it contains are a strange mix of magical realism and wattpad porn.
I love magical realism and I can't bear to watch it be scathed with vulgar, repetitious accounts of sexual intercourse that always sounds the same, even if the people having it are always different.
What annoyed me the most, though, wasn't the unnecessary, boring sex.
It was the fact that the women protagonists are not difficult, they are just women.
Sad, broken women. But just women.
Here's a more accurate title for the book: Hurt Women.
Unless the clever idea is, there are difficult women and easy women, the latter being those who acquiesce silently to a society that wants us docile, defenseless and happy to be so.
I haven't met many such women, but I have met a lot of sad women and they aren't always the same.
Too many fucks given to lay claims to a universal.
Pachinko takes quite a long time to set the premise for its actual “pachinko” part, and even after the turning point, it deliberately takes its time to cultivate the title metaphor - an endgame that thoroughly impressed me.
I had read about Zainichi Koreans before, but I had no knowledge of the link between their outcast condition and what we westerners usually think is just a Japanese silly game-craze.
All in all, Pachinko taught me something new.
No matter how much I read about Japan, though, I can never even begin to understand the reasons/scope/real nature of what still looks to me like an astoundingly resilient brand of psychological rigidity.
Very well written, I have loved Sunja, Hansu and Isak. Other characters aren't as well-rounded and complete. A couple of gratuitous sex scenes popped up in places where they didn't really add much to the plot or depth of the characters involved. Other than that, quite a fine book.
I kept reading about the terrible horrible, no good, very bad plot twist, but nothing could have prepared me for it.
It's one of those literary moves that could make or break a novel and I'm not completely sure whether it breaks it or it makes it.
It shatters every single thing you have come to believe about the main character, Jas, turning a quite superficial novel about adolescence and stupidity into a very uncomfortable piece about identity, perception and, I suppose, mental illness.
So, why the two stars?
The plot twist's timing and execution.
Although I don't know how Malkani could have done it any differently, I think it's the gem and the fatal flaw of this book. Its purpose is, if possible, too of open for debate.
At the end of Londonstani I'm not shocked by the intrinsic existential void it depicts, I don't feel any urge to gain a better understanding of our consumerist society and I'm left unable to empathize with an unlikable main character that is all there is to the book.
On the back it says: “‘breathless - hilarious and convincing' The New York Times”.
I say: long-winded, occasionally brilliant, sometimes deeply disappointing, ratty, coward. A con of a book that I'm unwilling to praise but certainly can't ignore.
Endlich bin ich fertig mit dem verflixtem Buch.
Abstoßend. Unnötig. Grundlos paranoid, zwar manchmal klug geschrieben.
Ich gehöre nicht zu denen, die unbedingt einen Happy-Ending haben wollen, ich verstehe aber nicht, wieso dieses Buch fast ausschließlich aus abscheulichen Figuren bestehet, die wie vorprogrammierte Roboter wirken - grausam böse nur, weil sie es halt sind, und dazu geistlos.
Und kann mir jemand bitte erklären, was mit den Biologielehrern eigentlich ist? War Frau Berg einmal mit einen verheiratet, oder warum werden sie schließlich zum Paradigma der idiotischen Zwecklosigkeit?
I swear, I never eat corn. Ever.
This being said, I suddenly felt the urge to munch on some. And I did.
Am I deranged or is it just that thing, that they tell you not to think of a polar bear, and all you can do is picture polar bears dancing the tango, driving steamrollers down some interstate and so on?
Personal musings aside, this might be the one John Green's book I enjoyed the most yet. Probably because there's no sickening love painted all over. I'm an awfully cynical person, I know. Despite not being a fan of vampire/werevolf/shapeshifter/zombie-ish fiction I liked this tiny thing.
Enjoy, everybody. It's free and there are no unicorns in it.
Se non fosse che il ragazzo sa scrivere e l'editor è molto bravo, non varrebbe la pena.
Ma tant'è...
Il sesso è noioso e non vuol dire nulla, l'amore anche (ma almeno qui ci prova a dire qualcosa), le sconcezze che restano sono le parolacce che dice Sabrina, che è uno dei pochi (due) personaggi veramente riusciti.
Però si fa leggere.
I guess I will have to abandon this romantic notion that, since I really like the author of the novel, I'll also really really like the novels themselves.
I liked the Abundance of Katherines, but it never crossed my mind that it could be a book for me. I would have probably enjoyed it at his best when I was 14 or something.
I liked all the footnotes, though. Not only because they are a smart narrative device, but also because they do a good job in showing how a mind like Colin's works.
And the math.
See ya again on youtube, John Green. I love you, but as in a writer/reader-out-of-recommended-age-group kind of relationship. So I'm dumping you.
Love, Katherine.
What a fucking horrible book.
I'm really surprised to see everybody gushing over this piece of five-hundredth-rate crap.
This was presented to my mother as a thank-you by a friend of hers, I picked it up because it read on the sleeve that Sophie Kinsella loved it, so of course I wanted to hurt my brain really bad and see for myself what kind of ‘literature' world-renown crapseller Kinsella ‘hearted'.
This is it and of this at least I'm not surprised.
Here the reasons for hating it:
- psychological depth of characters equals zero
- decision-making of said characters is preposterous
- male lead expresses respect for female lead's intellectual curiosity, which mistifies readers: said curiosity should be described by the fact that she goes on the internet a couple of times and signs up for a community site. Oh Lordie!
- a conspicuous part of the plot claims to revolve around a ethical nevralgic point, which is never discussed in depht
it seems to me this is enough. But there's more. A lot more.
What a coarse, incredibly dim-witted, horrible thing.
