Doppelganger

this book made me dizzy. On the one hand I like the idea of pulling together many threads under a common theme (the idea of the doppelgänger) but in practice this made the book feel disjointed and chaotic in such a way that I can't hold onto a lot of the ideas in it, and it took a long time to get through.

I also agree with other reviews that the conclusion really suffers as a result of the disjointedness. Like the overall, tie-it-all-together conclusion is basically: work with other people and value community rather than difference. Great but kind of lame compared to some of the big issues in the book. This might have worked better as a collection of separate essays, each with its own proper conclusion.

This book was also clearly written for an audience who already agree with Naomi Klein on most things, and sometimes veered into kind of smugness which was annoying to read, even when I agreed with her.

That being said, I like the exploration of how so much in the world/society can be related back to the idea of the doppelgänger/doubling. The web of connections she spins out from that central idea is fascinating. The parts where she talks about specific examples of doubling/doppelgängers (whether in real life or in fiction) were some of the most interesting. The concepts of the Mirror Word and Shadow Lands were also useful.

I wrote down several quotes from this book...I think it is worth reading...But the overall feeling I had at the end was “finally...” and “that was unnecessarily long,” so it can't get more than 3 or 3.5⭐️