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jessdex's review against another edition
3.0
I don’t know why but I couldn’t make myself relate to the main character. The book kept a steady pace but it wasn’t always my favorite.
tyardley's review against another edition
1.0
Starting off with this book, I had high hopes. I'm not entirely sure where all the positive reviews come from. The characters in this book were downright unlikable. Vi was self-centered, thoughtless, and pretentious. Maybe this was intentional, but I found not a single redeeming quality for her.
Bill was better, but came across as a token black guy just to make her obsession with race less discriminatory. He had the beginnings of a caring, sympathetic, professional person, yet it stopped there. He wasn't allowed to develop into his own person. He was simply a background and foundation for Vi's story to grow - their relationship was completely unbelievable.
As the story went on, I started to become frustrated with the sentence structure and complete lack of editing. By p.173 I lost it. Vi and Bill are on the phone discussing the investigation she's gotten herself messed up in, from the first-person perspective of Vi, and Abbott writes, "Bill closed his eyes to think." WHAT? I had to reread the section a few times just to be sure I didn't miss a subtle transition to an in-person conversation. There was none. However, transitions such as what I mentioned occur quite a bit and chop up the cohesion of the story.
Finally, I skipped to the epilogue at some point and realized that Abbott was attempting to write a story about social injustice. Now, maybe I'm a bit biased because I read this literally after reading Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult. While I didn't LOVE her story either, she at least did a good job truly investigating racism and micro-aggression in America. Abbott seems like she had this idea for a story, and decided to call it a social injustice story just to give it a bit of heft. Unjust deaths of black men in America is a huge deal, yet the protagonist was photographing ANY black man who had died. Many of her subjects were the victims of natural means or accidents, not murder. Therefore her exhibit was not about social injustice, but about exhibiting black men who were presented in a classier way than they may have spent their lives. There was so much focus on Bill's ability to make them presentable and artistic...as though they had no value of their own before he got his hands on them.
She does touch on the potential of Vi capitalizing on their deaths for her own gain and exploiting them, but then she backpedals her character from the idea because....wait for it...Vi is 25% black!! Even though she grew up "white" without a black father in her life and probably never once experienced the challenges Black Americans do, suddenly she felt entitled to continue her project.
Could this have gotten any worse? No. Gah.
Bill was better, but came across as a token black guy just to make her obsession with race less discriminatory. He had the beginnings of a caring, sympathetic, professional person, yet it stopped there. He wasn't allowed to develop into his own person. He was simply a background and foundation for Vi's story to grow - their relationship was completely unbelievable.
As the story went on, I started to become frustrated with the sentence structure and complete lack of editing. By p.173 I lost it. Vi and Bill are on the phone discussing the investigation she's gotten herself messed up in, from the first-person perspective of Vi, and Abbott writes, "Bill closed his eyes to think." WHAT? I had to reread the section a few times just to be sure I didn't miss a subtle transition to an in-person conversation. There was none. However, transitions such as what I mentioned occur quite a bit and chop up the cohesion of the story.
Finally, I skipped to the epilogue at some point and realized that Abbott was attempting to write a story about social injustice. Now, maybe I'm a bit biased because I read this literally after reading Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult. While I didn't LOVE her story either, she at least did a good job truly investigating racism and micro-aggression in America. Abbott seems like she had this idea for a story, and decided to call it a social injustice story just to give it a bit of heft. Unjust deaths of black men in America is a huge deal, yet the protagonist was photographing ANY black man who had died. Many of her subjects were the victims of natural means or accidents, not murder. Therefore her exhibit was not about social injustice, but about exhibiting black men who were presented in a classier way than they may have spent their lives. There was so much focus on Bill's ability to make them presentable and artistic...as though they had no value of their own before he got his hands on them.
She does touch on the potential of Vi capitalizing on their deaths for her own gain and exploiting them, but then she backpedals her character from the idea because....wait for it...Vi is 25% black!! Even though she grew up "white" without a black father in her life and probably never once experienced the challenges Black Americans do, suddenly she felt entitled to continue her project.
Could this have gotten any worse? No. Gah.
faysie34's review
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
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