Scan barcode
cmcrockford's review
challenging
dark
funny
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Does this stick the entire landing, grass to stem? I dunno, probably not, but imagine Patricia Highsmith or JG Ballard rewriting a romance but armed with Aristotle and this is Affect, a freaky philosophical novel that's about love and also, uh, everything. Life, death, the works. I've read few books like it and that's a compliment.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Car accident, Death, and Blood
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts
frasersimons's review
5.0
This book won’t be for everybody, I’ll say that. It’s experimental in terms of structure, form, plot, genre (conventions); basically most things. It’s highly subjective—my personal catnip—it’s cerebral and extremely engaging to read.
It’s about a philosophy student who meets a guy named Logan and hooks up with him, and the rest is a series of vignettes that depict the trajectory of their relationship, as it pertains to the narrators point of view. Her lens is very unique and often runs together with trains of thought that are how she reveals her character. Even when the random thought is a macabre or disturbing, it gets screen time. There’s not that much censoring, but simultaneously also an arrangement in which some it is it is rhyme and meter and legitimately just poetry. Not all the time, but a lot of it is interspersed.
It is phenomenal at conveying important character elements through action, even as it is relayed through the heavy philosophical component. What things feel like are sometimes literalized. What is imagined is as important as what seems to be grounded in the external. It does not differentiate between a rich internal world and how a particular conversation she is overthinking to try to fit in with strangers.
It’s othering while relatable, strange but alluring. It is a hallmark of excellent writers to produce a unique lens that, in its specificity, elicits thought and nuance and edification, while also, in its tightness, be instantly relatable and connecting for the reader.
This does that beautifully. It’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind within the mind of a philosophical student grappling with love and existential crisis in the commingling of identity as we attempt to understand another person, foreign as they are.
It’s about a philosophy student who meets a guy named Logan and hooks up with him, and the rest is a series of vignettes that depict the trajectory of their relationship, as it pertains to the narrators point of view. Her lens is very unique and often runs together with trains of thought that are how she reveals her character. Even when the random thought is a macabre or disturbing, it gets screen time. There’s not that much censoring, but simultaneously also an arrangement in which some it is it is rhyme and meter and legitimately just poetry. Not all the time, but a lot of it is interspersed.
It is phenomenal at conveying important character elements through action, even as it is relayed through the heavy philosophical component. What things feel like are sometimes literalized. What is imagined is as important as what seems to be grounded in the external. It does not differentiate between a rich internal world and how a particular conversation she is overthinking to try to fit in with strangers.
It’s othering while relatable, strange but alluring. It is a hallmark of excellent writers to produce a unique lens that, in its specificity, elicits thought and nuance and edification, while also, in its tightness, be instantly relatable and connecting for the reader.
This does that beautifully. It’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind within the mind of a philosophical student grappling with love and existential crisis in the commingling of identity as we attempt to understand another person, foreign as they are.
More...