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anastar's review against another edition
4.0
I think I really liked it and I know I didn't understand it.
duncanvb's review against another edition
5.0
Acker's books feel like being beaten to a pulp - this one feels like she's grabbing books off the shelves of a library and slamming them directly into your face.
mollygorelick's review
dark
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
calla351's review against another edition
5.0
This was a trip—like a more digestible Burroughs, and in the best way. Really enjoyed it, though probably didn’t understand most of it. Could do with a re-read. Should have read the Dicken’s “Great Expectations” first.
ollieshrouder's review against another edition
3.0
I will preface that i haven’t read the original Dickens novel and i’m sure that affects the experience, but I didn’t find this one as cogent as her other work, and feels a lot more “dip in dip out,” as if intentionally breaking up the book into different moments and analogies. There is some amazing stuff here, but at the same time an equal amount went over my head.
ruthie_'s review
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
erkiiich's review against another edition
3.0
I read this for class.
This is a very complicated book, and I don't understand half of it. You'd have to read it several times to begin to comprehend it – which is what I should have done, as I'm doing a group project on the book.
Postmodernism, tricky.
These kind of books are hard to rate, as I'm convinced that my opinion of them are directly tied to how much effort I've put into the reading. Anyhow, here follows a few quotes I found interesting:
This is a very complicated book, and I don't understand half of it. You'd have to read it several times to begin to comprehend it – which is what I should have done, as I'm doing a group project on the book.
Postmodernism, tricky.
These kind of books are hard to rate, as I'm convinced that my opinion of them are directly tied to how much effort I've put into the reading. Anyhow, here follows a few quotes I found interesting:
Let's face it: some kids are born with silver spoons in their mouths. I'm an old woman whose teeth are falling out (Acker 1982, 23).
I don't care what people think; when they think they´re thinking about me, they´re actually thinking about the ways they act. I certainly don't want them to give me their pictures of me I like the ways animals are socially. I would rather be petted than be part of this human social reality which is all pretense and lies (Acker 1982, 62).
Red in each longshoreman's eyes when he returns home and slaps his wife around red at the end of the cigarette butt red in the dynamite red of the fire. Red of the eyelid and nose flesh of the bums walking down First Avenue past the more monetarily successful artists. Red the colors of the condos they´re building over the bodies of old people who now have nowhere to live. Red the artist's hand not from paint but from striking his lover's face out of repressed fear. The raw afternoon is rawest, and the red is most red, and the streets are filthiest on the part of Bell Street next to the river where I lived in fear of my lover for six months (Acker 1982, 90-91).