Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.15 AVERAGE
3.15 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Really loved this. I connected a lot with the protagonist and I loved all the literary references.
challenging
dark
slow-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
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I loved the beautiful writing but the constant run on sentences were hard to keep up with. I would lose track of what was being said. I found reading this book outloud helped with that.
Laconically verbose, paradoxically self effacing content set in self aggrandising prose. Distant, aloof, detached.... I think she achieved what she set out to do.
I honestly wanted to fling this book out the window when I started it. But it grew on me, and stuck.
If Sarah Bernstein were a stock, I'd be buying into her right about now.
I honestly wanted to fling this book out the window when I started it. But it grew on me, and stuck.
If Sarah Bernstein were a stock, I'd be buying into her right about now.
The protagonist is the central introspective turning point of everything in this short and uneasy novel. Her development over the course of the book is the only plot. It left me with a lot of questions.
We learn that she is not just obedient, but absolutely subservient. And she is incredibly anxious about being so. But beyond her extreme anxiety, is a feeling (which permeates all aspects of the book), that something just isn’t quite right. The description of her dressing herself from bottom to top, so that she has to awkwardly pull underwear over her boots is a perfect example. Why is she doing this? To what end?
Her grip on reality feels tenuous, however wonderfully she describes the natural environment around her. This is because her life has taught her not to trust herself, and inculcated deep trust of others’ opinions. An increasingly odd experience with a testicle-less, three legged dog proves this in the strangest of ways: so tractable is she that a neighbour can convince her the dog has balls.
Towards the end of the book instead of just a strange individual, clueless about social cues, she becomes a simulacrum of something much bigger, hints are dropped throughout, and the townspeople, instead of seeming like a projection of her anxieties, exhibit increasingly disturbing behaviour, behaviours of a xenophobic mob. Here are the clues to the history of this place.
Her docility finally seems to drop, not as rebellion, but as a kind of determined obedience. But to what? In the final pages and now I am wondering about what this shift means. Grasping at what it says about xenophobia today.
I wrote this quote down early in the book and it has ended up being the best I can come up with as to its theme and meaning:
“…the question of harm and it’s reproduction so unanswerable, the beginnings always beginning again.”
I cannot say I enjoyed it, but it is enough to go make me mull over it for sometime and want to discuss it with others.
We learn that she is not just obedient, but absolutely subservient. And she is incredibly anxious about being so. But beyond her extreme anxiety, is a feeling (which permeates all aspects of the book), that something just isn’t quite right. The description of her dressing herself from bottom to top, so that she has to awkwardly pull underwear over her boots is a perfect example. Why is she doing this? To what end?
Her grip on reality feels tenuous, however wonderfully she describes the natural environment around her. This is because her life has taught her not to trust herself, and inculcated deep trust of others’ opinions. An increasingly odd experience with a testicle-less, three legged dog proves this in the strangest of ways: so tractable is she that a neighbour can convince her the dog has balls.
Towards the end of the book instead of just a strange individual, clueless about social cues, she becomes a simulacrum of something much bigger, hints are dropped throughout, and the townspeople, instead of seeming like a projection of her anxieties, exhibit increasingly disturbing behaviour, behaviours of a xenophobic mob. Here are the clues to the history of this place.
Her docility finally seems to drop, not as rebellion, but as a kind of determined obedience. But to what? In the final pages and now I am wondering about what this shift means. Grasping at what it says about xenophobia today.
I wrote this quote down early in the book and it has ended up being the best I can come up with as to its theme and meaning:
“…the question of harm and it’s reproduction so unanswerable, the beginnings always beginning again.”
I cannot say I enjoyed it, but it is enough to go make me mull over it for sometime and want to discuss it with others.
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
tentatively putting this down as a 3.9 but my thoughts are all over the place and i am not actually sure how i feel
reads as if nausea (jean-paul sartre) and the idiot (elif batuman) had a book baby. successfully left me with a mounting sense of dread and disturbance
there is so much to pick apart in this but i simply do not have the time or gumption to give it the thorough dissection it deserves. i hope some group of lit majors somewhere out there is having a field day with it
reads as if nausea (jean-paul sartre) and the idiot (elif batuman) had a book baby. successfully left me with a mounting sense of dread and disturbance
there is so much to pick apart in this but i simply do not have the time or gumption to give it the thorough dissection it deserves. i hope some group of lit majors somewhere out there is having a field day with it
