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3.16 AVERAGE
3.16 AVERAGE
Interesting premise, but I rotated between bored and intrigued, finally settling on bored about 2/3 of the way through.
I gave this book another try. Despite that - it wasn't really for me. I couldn't really get into the alternate world of psychic attacks and visiting with the dead. Not my cup of tea.
This is strange, startling, occasionally funny, and a good read. The writer imagines an alternate universe in which people are much more accepting of paranormal gifts, and these gifts are generally more obvious. This may sound like ordinary fantasy fiction, but the novel has none of the usual shortcomings. It never gets hung up on dungeons-and-dragons type grades of wizardry. Good and evil are presented, but in a nuanced way that’s closer to real life, and that raises some questions.
So it’s both clever and emotionally intense. The hero, Julia Severn is a student at The Workshop, which provides instruction to developing psychics. She starts out as the mentee of the school’s most powerful psychic, Madame Ackerman, but after she tries to intercede and rescue her teacher from failure, she finds herself on the outs. During this novel, she works on differentiating her friends, enemies and family members, and this isn’t an easy process.
The title refers to a new social phenomenon. As an alternative to committing suicide, people choose to vanish completely from everyone’s lives. They generally leave behind a little film explaining why they did it. In this book, people vanish, re-appear, and re-vanish, sometimes wearing other people’s faces, creating a hall of mirrors effect.
So it’s both clever and emotionally intense. The hero, Julia Severn is a student at The Workshop, which provides instruction to developing psychics. She starts out as the mentee of the school’s most powerful psychic, Madame Ackerman, but after she tries to intercede and rescue her teacher from failure, she finds herself on the outs. During this novel, she works on differentiating her friends, enemies and family members, and this isn’t an easy process.
The title refers to a new social phenomenon. As an alternative to committing suicide, people choose to vanish completely from everyone’s lives. They generally leave behind a little film explaining why they did it. In this book, people vanish, re-appear, and re-vanish, sometimes wearing other people’s faces, creating a hall of mirrors effect.
Only got 1/4 in --- *meh*
Didn't find a reason to continue forward...
Didn't find a reason to continue forward...
I don't even know what happened in this book.
Took me forever to finish. It was all over the place.
Took me forever to finish. It was all over the place.
This was wild. I will have to go read other reviews to figure out what this was really about. I checked the jacket copy and the blurbs several times and it said "grief." So I had that lens, at least, by which to look through. But the actual story here is so strange, yet so mundane. Is this surrealism? That's the only world I think that could vaguely describe the world Julavits has written, where the protagonist, Julia, is a student of parapsychology, a talented medium, daughter of a suicided mother, and sick to death because her mentor has been attacking her since a birthday party gone wrong, which was actually more about a film safe, a pornographer, Julia being a much better psychic than her mentor who is on the lookout for both the safe and the pornographer, and a whole ass cast of characters, many of whom are dedicated to either pornography, "vanishing" (meaning effectively killing their identities complete with film to their loved ones only to actually, really live on somewhere else, as someone else), or both. It was so weird! And it was good! I liked Julia and thought she was cool. I would like to study her, and react to things more like she did. Not in the sense I'd like to be vulnerable to endless psychic attack, but much more extemporaneous about life in general, and taking what comes at me for exactly what it says it is. I mean, I already think I'm like this, but Julia is witty about it.
This makes no sense, I know. It's a good, weird book. Read it. I'm going to read Julavits's magazine and probably the rest of her novels.
This makes no sense, I know. It's a good, weird book. Read it. I'm going to read Julavits's magazine and probably the rest of her novels.
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Excellent writing
it's a rare novel that captures the intensity and disorientation of certain deep connections with appropriate strangeness, darkness and humor. i think, perhaps, what julavits articulates here, in part, is the visceral experience of metaphysical moments (i.e., how it feels to intuit, to love, to grieve, to hide from ones emotions, to make oneself metaphysically sick) -- and in doing begins to create a language for emotions or experiences that, to my knowledge, don't yet have names, or at least, evade a shared, common language. the strangeness of this novel felt resonant, and challenging, and frightening -- all of which i seek out in great fiction -- all while avoiding comfort, which is such a narcotic, the temptation towards it an addiction, and which is so difficult to resist, especially when dealing with death & mothers.
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This was a wild ride... Strange and complex, I enjoyed it!
Enjoyable but ultimately anticlimactic. I liked the author's tone and style, and the story kept me interested, but I felt like like she got to the end and wanted to emphasize that this wasn't just genre fiction but Serious Literature and therefore you get not a bang but a wimper.