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george_salis's review
“And what that is is is.”
Excuse the grammatical stutter. What this is is a botched novel about botched colonialism. It leans on a strange archaic-modern prose style that’s curious at first, even mildly exciting in its potentially surrealistic syntax, but then it indulges in the taxing sin of tediousness as it’s clear that this is is is the only voice in the void we’ll hear from start to finish. Rather than being “musical above all,” as the copy claims, it’s choppy above all, like the waves you’ll starve upon for most of the book. There’s a penchant for long sentences that seem sutured together by the emptiness of punctuation rather than something woven with natural flow if not melody. One wishes that the author paid more attention to how Joseph McElroy does it. Even at Joe’s most eldritch, there’s always a sense of form rather than redundant clods of mud being smooshed together. The moments when the prose is successful are few, but at such times I was reminded of Cormac McCarthy; indeed, the repetitive, insular content also reminds me why Blood Meridian was lacking. There’s a dedication to the unrelenting that may be true of the time period but makes for a read that’s stilted, more so in this case. Unlike McCarthy, we don’t have much in the way of evocative word pairs, like “autistic darkness” in The Road or “death hilarious” in Blood Meridian. Also, Persson includes multiple instances of fucks or “enfucked” that are jarring as an anachronism at best, risible at worst. Could the following sentence be an apology, an excuse? “The hardship we dwelled in can not [sic] be limned in adequate phrases and you must bring with you the sketch of us and know it was more unchosen.”
Some risks were taken in this debut novel, which is more than I can say for most debuts, but overall I would recommend instead Abel Posse’s only two translated novels and Johnny Stanton’s Mangled Hands, which compensates for its monophony with a profusion of rich dream imagery, among other things.
Excuse the grammatical stutter. What this is is a botched novel about botched colonialism. It leans on a strange archaic-modern prose style that’s curious at first, even mildly exciting in its potentially surrealistic syntax, but then it indulges in the taxing sin of tediousness as it’s clear that this is is is the only voice in the void we’ll hear from start to finish. Rather than being “musical above all,” as the copy claims, it’s choppy above all, like the waves you’ll starve upon for most of the book. There’s a penchant for long sentences that seem sutured together by the emptiness of punctuation rather than something woven with natural flow if not melody. One wishes that the author paid more attention to how Joseph McElroy does it. Even at Joe’s most eldritch, there’s always a sense of form rather than redundant clods of mud being smooshed together. The moments when the prose is successful are few, but at such times I was reminded of Cormac McCarthy; indeed, the repetitive, insular content also reminds me why Blood Meridian was lacking. There’s a dedication to the unrelenting that may be true of the time period but makes for a read that’s stilted, more so in this case. Unlike McCarthy, we don’t have much in the way of evocative word pairs, like “autistic darkness” in The Road or “death hilarious” in Blood Meridian. Also, Persson includes multiple instances of fucks or “enfucked” that are jarring as an anachronism at best, risible at worst. Could the following sentence be an apology, an excuse? “The hardship we dwelled in can not [sic] be limned in adequate phrases and you must bring with you the sketch of us and know it was more unchosen.”
Some risks were taken in this debut novel, which is more than I can say for most debuts, but overall I would recommend instead Abel Posse’s only two translated novels and Johnny Stanton’s Mangled Hands, which compensates for its monophony with a profusion of rich dream imagery, among other things.
inelegancies's review
5.0
a new maker of run-on sentences that feel effortless but never weak and who shapes words delicately and gifts them with fresh dimensions. my only wish was for them to have forsaken god by the end.
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