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lmrising's review against another edition
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
bookishuniverse's review against another edition
4.0
Very weird, but at the same time good. A lot of the time you aren't quite sure what is going on, but neither is the narrator so you have that connection--and it works.
rdreading9's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
It’s a weird one, but I liked it.
2kerrymehome's review
funny
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
3.5
I love how Leo's intellectual ego is the source of his misogyny, his delusion, and his self regard. Like so many selfish smart men, his irreproachable intelligence blinds him to the point of not being intelligent at all, and I left the book feeling sorry for him. He reminds me a bit of Pnin in Pnin, or Ben Chang in the episode of Community when he pretends to be a noir detective. I just found myself wishing Rema would find someone else, he clearly has such a limited appreciation of her. But the book's weirdness and navel-gazing descent into madness was a fun exercise in proving myself more sane than someone else.
bettyvd's review against another edition
2.0
Bij momenten leuk en vinnig, op andere momenten te zwaar en te vol. Spielerei met gekende neurologische aandoening waarbij het bekende als vreemd ervaren wordt. Ok dus,maar ik ben er niet wild van.
domcarino's review against another edition
I couldn't connect with the narrator. I found him patronizing, long-winded, and delusional (which was maybe the point, but I didn't want to suffer through the entire book to find out). The meteorology plotline didn't interest me at all. I really enjoyed "Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch" by this same author, but I just don't think this book is my cup of tea.
adrymxl's review against another edition
4.0
Insane, pun intended. If you like Donna Tartt's obsessive characters, you'll like this novel. Leo is sexist and inconsiderate but he thinks he's a great husband, for what he says, he never really understood it even when he was well. I hope Rema gets all his money, become a successful woman doing something she likes and never talk to weirdos in coffee shops.
naokamiya's review against another edition
4.0
This was a really interesting and kinda bewildering read. It obviously shares a bloodline with 20th century postmodernism in its self-referentiality and playing with reality and time, but its overall presentation is a lot less fantastical than much of the more out-there premises found in this type of fiction; instead it's about a man who is so convinced his wife has been replaced by a double that he fails to notice her existence even when she is right in front of him. As one would imagine this would lead to a narrative in which one is lead to question if it's our protagonist's own internal reality fractioning rather than the external. And his narration is unique, quirky without being cloying, and narcotic, employing a sense of long-winded numbness that really added a lot of flavor to his character and an understanding of how this kind of person could become convinced of something so insane. Add real-life intrigue from Galchen's family history and there's a really playful, entertaining, and oftentimes touching little novel here.
I really like what this says in regards to relationships and the internal [and external] armors we build up throughout them, especially long-running ones. How much do you think you know a person? Do you really ever know them? When becomes the point where "not knowing" goes to "knowing" for anyone but yourself [if we can assume one can even know themselves, which, it appears, Leo himself is constantly grappling with]? Sometimes we can miss [or misinterpret] what is so clearly there that our view of a person we've constructed may be of an entirely different breed than the reality itself. By presumably detailing an elaborate construction of conspiracies to explain his wife's "disappearance", Leo attempts to make sense of these questions yet reveals only that he's obfuscating himself away from the truth desperately. All this could be solved with communication but in the case of a person like Leo, who is so deeply within himself that he's unable to see the anything but his own convictions and preconceived notions of reality, that it's not so easy an undertaking.
I really ended up enjoying this; I wasn't sure what to think of it at first, as it kinda presents itself as a Borgesian psychological labyrinth but much less viscerally stimulating than something with Borges or say Pynchon's vast scopes on reality, but that's very much the point of the book, as this is from a point of view that's entirely internalized and singular. This is a very promising debut and this is the kind of book I can imagine myself thinking about down the line and enjoying it even more as I mull it over. Definitely going to peep more Galchen after this.
"Sometimes it terrifies me, when I sense the exponenting mass of human lives - of unlabeled evidence of mysteries undiscerned - about which I know nothing."
I really like what this says in regards to relationships and the internal [and external] armors we build up throughout them, especially long-running ones. How much do you think you know a person? Do you really ever know them? When becomes the point where "not knowing" goes to "knowing" for anyone but yourself [if we can assume one can even know themselves, which, it appears, Leo himself is constantly grappling with]? Sometimes we can miss [or misinterpret] what is so clearly there that our view of a person we've constructed may be of an entirely different breed than the reality itself. By presumably detailing an elaborate construction of conspiracies to explain his wife's "disappearance", Leo attempts to make sense of these questions yet reveals only that he's obfuscating himself away from the truth desperately. All this could be solved with communication but in the case of a person like Leo, who is so deeply within himself that he's unable to see the anything but his own convictions and preconceived notions of reality, that it's not so easy an undertaking.
I really ended up enjoying this; I wasn't sure what to think of it at first, as it kinda presents itself as a Borgesian psychological labyrinth but much less viscerally stimulating than something with Borges or say Pynchon's vast scopes on reality, but that's very much the point of the book, as this is from a point of view that's entirely internalized and singular. This is a very promising debut and this is the kind of book I can imagine myself thinking about down the line and enjoying it even more as I mull it over. Definitely going to peep more Galchen after this.
"Sometimes it terrifies me, when I sense the exponenting mass of human lives - of unlabeled evidence of mysteries undiscerned - about which I know nothing."
sandeestarlite's review against another edition
1.0
This book is for someone looking for a challenging read. There are many multisyllabic words used, often in place of simple language and there is choppy sentence structure. Sometimes you have to read a sentence or paragraph a couple of times to figure out what it is saying. Sad to say I don't have the brain power for this right now as the premise sounds interesting: what would you do if you suspected your spouse was not the same person they were this morning?
marykohl's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
3.75