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3.36 AVERAGE
3.36 AVERAGE
challenging
funny
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is one of those "what the heck did I just read" books, but in a very understated way.
My main takeaway from this one was confusion. Throughout the book, I could not decipher whether I was being laughed at or laughed with. The plot was far more interesting than I expected it to be, but it also veered pretty far from the synopsis – Treasure Island and the narrator's "core values" drop out of the book around midway and don't make a return until the conclusion.
Despite the low rating, I did have a good time with this one. I'm just not sure I took anything away from it.
My main takeaway from this one was confusion. Throughout the book, I could not decipher whether I was being laughed at or laughed with. The plot was far more interesting than I expected it to be, but it also veered pretty far from the synopsis – Treasure Island and the narrator's "core values" drop out of the book around midway and don't make a return until the conclusion.
Despite the low rating, I did have a good time with this one. I'm just not sure I took anything away from it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death
Moderate: Drug abuse, Infidelity, Toxic friendship, Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Body shaming, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Grief
also note: invasion of privacy, mentions of hospitals/ER, very brief comment on paternal incest, implied undiagnosed mental illness (narrator discusses "successful avoidance" of therapy)
I think the thing most interesting about this book is how the main character embraces "Treasure Island" as a life manifesto & both tries to emulate what she's gotten out of it & evangelizes it. What comes out is a distorted sense of the book, a destructive mentality built from those distortions, & ultimately destroyed relationships. It is almost a satire of how people of all religions use their holy writings to further their own agendas without paying attention to how it actually is playing out for good or ill. I enjoyed it in how it made me think of how I have the capacity to distort the Bible if I'm not careful (which I'm not always careful). However, it's not the best writing & the main character is a bit tiresome to spend much time with. Fortunately, it's a short book.
dark
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Read if you liked My Year Of Rest and Relaxation (moshfegh) or tai pei (tao lin) or the rules of attraction (Brett Easton Ellis) or the new me (halle butler).
dark
funny
Strong character development:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
ottessa moshfegh narrators have nothing on this bitch omg
Weird, funny, disturbing, at times gross—reading this book was a truly out of body experience. Definitely some trigger warnings for mental health (not a psychiatrist, but seems like the narrator suffers from some kind of delusions).
The second book I read this year with an exclamation mark in the title (and this one has three of them, which is three times as exciting as Swamplandia!), also one of the better books I've read this year--the best not to make any yearend best books lists (possibly because of its December publication date).
Treasure Island!!! is told in the first person by a narrator who is hilarious, quirky and as self-centered as she is completely unselfaware. She is a recent college graduate stuck in a series of dead end jobs, most recently working part-time in a "pet library" where people can rent pets for a few days at a time. The book begins with her discovery of the book Treasure Island and the story is about her increasing obsession with modeling her life after the hero, Jim Hawkins.
She reads Treasure Island over and over again the exclusion of everything else. She believes she can divine key life lessons and values from it that she puts on index cards and uses as a model for her own life, and she even goes so far as to buy a parrot. She finds so many layers to Treasure Island but hilariously seems to be blissfully unaware that it is a pirate story and to not know many of the basic aspects of what it is actually about.
Treasure Island!!! follows the standard downward spiral of an addiction story, but does it with over-the-top zaniness, wit, charm, and insight unintentionally shed on the people around her and herself. Every page sparkled and it was hard to put it down until reading to the very end.
Treasure Island!!! is told in the first person by a narrator who is hilarious, quirky and as self-centered as she is completely unselfaware. She is a recent college graduate stuck in a series of dead end jobs, most recently working part-time in a "pet library" where people can rent pets for a few days at a time. The book begins with her discovery of the book Treasure Island and the story is about her increasing obsession with modeling her life after the hero, Jim Hawkins.
She reads Treasure Island over and over again the exclusion of everything else. She believes she can divine key life lessons and values from it that she puts on index cards and uses as a model for her own life, and she even goes so far as to buy a parrot. She finds so many layers to Treasure Island but hilariously seems to be blissfully unaware that it is a pirate story and to not know many of the basic aspects of what it is actually about.
Treasure Island!!! follows the standard downward spiral of an addiction story, but does it with over-the-top zaniness, wit, charm, and insight unintentionally shed on the people around her and herself. Every page sparkled and it was hard to put it down until reading to the very end.
