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archytas's review
3.0
Firstly, let's be clear: Lim's critique of various subcultures, from public servants to consultants to tech-savvy do-gooders to clueless middle-class progressives to the overly intense to Islamic Student organisations is so spot on it is painful at times. Even selective schools get a look in "They were students at an elite Sydney high school - somebody told them they were the leaders of tomorrow about once a week. They sat there placidly, absorbing the praise and waiting for the speaker to move on to something more original." She is an acute observer, and if perhaps this can be harsh eye, it is the kind of harshness that is directed inward as well as outward. This book is really about the process of getting to adulthood and trying to work out how not to lose the passion and the sense of self along the way - and for that matter, why getting there matters at all. Lim raises important questions, and if the answers can seem mired in hopelessness, that perhaps is ok too.
The book is weighed down by flaws - the characters talk and think in speeches, even when polemicizing against speechifying, in a way that actually reminded me of Katherine Susannah Pritchard, but it also got exhausting after a while. They are also more successful as archetypes (as noted above, very sharply drawn archetypes) than as fully realised people. To build a compelling world that lasts over the 15 years the book covers, details could have used a bit more attention - the ages of characters progress at different rates, the eponymous company's business model makes little sense, most of the characters seem to make it to their mid-30s without anyone asking them if they are planning to have children, and perhaps most disconcertingly, technology and travel seem strangely static. It is as if the rich inner growth that drives the book takes place in a vacuum.
This is, however, to a large sense mediated by the love the book of ideas, even while sending up those who love them. The book is not afraid to show the kinds of lives my friends tend to lead - ones driven by this strange balance of indulgence and do-goodery (and yes, in a way that often can't distinguish between the two). Lim's characters want to be 'good people', even as they rapidly lose sight of what that might mean. The book never descends to the banal, or denies the characters values and reasons to engage.
I always prefer a flawed book with very strong strengths to something bland, and there was little bland here, and some passages that are absolutely worth the price of admission: "there had to be a place where encounters with the truth were possible. Where the sounds outside your head, other people’s lives, were granted just as much credence as the sounds within"
The book is weighed down by flaws - the characters talk and think in speeches, even when polemicizing against speechifying, in a way that actually reminded me of Katherine Susannah Pritchard, but it also got exhausting after a while. They are also more successful as archetypes (as noted above, very sharply drawn archetypes) than as fully realised people. To build a compelling world that lasts over the 15 years the book covers, details could have used a bit more attention - the ages of characters progress at different rates, the eponymous company's business model makes little sense, most of the characters seem to make it to their mid-30s without anyone asking them if they are planning to have children, and perhaps most disconcertingly, technology and travel seem strangely static. It is as if the rich inner growth that drives the book takes place in a vacuum.
This is, however, to a large sense mediated by the love the book of ideas, even while sending up those who love them. The book is not afraid to show the kinds of lives my friends tend to lead - ones driven by this strange balance of indulgence and do-goodery (and yes, in a way that often can't distinguish between the two). Lim's characters want to be 'good people', even as they rapidly lose sight of what that might mean. The book never descends to the banal, or denies the characters values and reasons to engage.
I always prefer a flawed book with very strong strengths to something bland, and there was little bland here, and some passages that are absolutely worth the price of admission: "there had to be a place where encounters with the truth were possible. Where the sounds outside your head, other people’s lives, were granted just as much credence as the sounds within"
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