Reviews

Greenland by David Santos Donaldson

sliqmiq's review

adventurous funny fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

claireskies's review

challenging emotional funny reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

literarycrushes's review

4.0

Greenland by David Santos Donaldson is novel inception: we learn the story of Kip (named after Rudyard Kipling), a novelist living in present-day Brooklyn who’s been struggling to sell his manuscript based on the true love story between E.M. Forster and Mohammed el Adl, an Arab Egyptian man, in 1919. After hundreds of rejections, Kip finally gets a lead when a top publisher requests a meeting with him, despite prefacing the meeting by saying she, too, is passing on his novel. Kip is desperate to hang onto this lead and begs her to reconsider her decision – she agrees to do so on two stipulations: 1) that he rewrite the entire novel from the perspective of Mohammed, and 2) that he completes the full rewrite of the novel within three weeks, before the publishing house she works for gets acquired by a larger house. Rather than admit the impossibility of this task, Kip decides to literally barricade himself in the basement of the Fort Greene brownstone he shares with his partner Ben, with nothing but some water, saltine crackers, espresso, and his laptop.
As we read along with sections of the novel as he writes them (hence the novel within a novel approach), we learn why Kip was originally hesitant to embrace Mohammed’s perspective as he feels it's one that hits too close to home. Kip has always struggled with his sense of identity (in fact, the first novel he writes during his failed attempt at an MFA was called The Nowherians, the Caribbean-English word for people of no abode), both back home in England, and now in America, where white Americans perceive him as too-black, and black Americans perceive of him as not black enough.
While this novel was especially fun to read as a writer (some of the ridiculousness of his desperation to be published had me laughing out loud or wanting to cry), what really made me love it was Kip’s deep explorations into himself, the interrogations of race and queerness, and the wonders of discovery he makes. And as a fellow literary nerd, I loved reading the many, many references he makes within!

mel_oh_me's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

bejulien's review

adventurous emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

wow

zozo_'s review

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Rape

justinmurray's review

emotional funny reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

maxhimelhoch's review

adventurous emotional funny mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

what a read!!! thoughtful and reflective, deeply referential in an exciting way - a welcoming way - that lets you feel in on the references and not nose in the air about them. Charming stories and tangents, like nicholson baker. But this story breaks beyond into identity, purpose, home, love. And a little whimsy, a little mystical sprinkled in for good measure.  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Gun violence, Suicide attempt, Child abuse, and Suicide

Moderate: Gun violence, Suicidal thoughts, and Death

Minor: Physical abuse

ecerkvenik's review

challenging dark emotional sad tense

2.0

lezreadalot's review against another edition

2.0

Heat makes one slow and lazy, but the cold prepares one for war. I want a mind like winter.

2.5 stars. This was fine? The writing had its ups and down but it was good enough, and the premise was weird in a way that appealed to me. We're following a struggling writer as he locks himself in his basement and labours to complete the book of his heart, about E.M. Forster and Mohammed el Adl, his Egyptian lover. He also ends up taking a journey to find himself and his voice, and that gets a little wacky and magical realism-y. His relationships with his husband and his best friend open up a lot of conversations about race and sexuality and their intersections, the narrator's place in the world as a gay black man, his sense of non-belonging as a person of colour with Bahamian roots growing up in England, and then later as a Brit in America. We get chapters of his book also, and there's a sort of connection between him and Mohammed. All very interesting, but sometimes the writing really lost me. This did a lot of telling as opposed to showing, which (hear me out!) definitely isn't always a bad thing. But it would sometimes feel like the prose would jump from really competent beautiful writing to a stark pamphlet about social evils. Just kinda jarring. It's not that I wanted less of those themes; I just wish there'd been more nuance in how it was woven in. If that makes sense. Around halfway through I had the sinking feeling that I wasn't going to like this a whole lot, but I kept reading because I did genuinely want to know what was going to happen. And well, now I know. And it was fine. I feel more apathetic about it than anything. So many of the conversations and conclusions felt pointless, and I don't need likeable characters in a lit fic novel, but it would've been nice if I'd at least grown to care about them a little? I didn't. (Especially not the best friend; I'm still sorta squinting my eyes at where that storyline went.)

(Also, nitpick, but this did the thing where it lumped the Caribbean together as a whole when describing people, like saying "Caribbean English" or "of Caribbean descent" which is nigh nonsensical to me. Specify where! Dialect, ethnicity and culture differ so much throughout the islands!)

I listened to the audiobook, and that might have contributed to my feelings, because I sadly didn't like the narrator very much. His voice was fine, but there were soooo many mispronunciations, it was driving me up a wall. For the French words, but a lot of the English ones as well? The accent work also wasn't my favourite. And there were several scenes that were supposed to be emotional, but the reading rendered them silly and kind of melodramatic instead. Alas. I feel vaguely guilty for finishing this, like maybe I should have just DNFed when I realised it wasn't completely my jam, but like I said, my curiosity about where Kipling would end up drove me to continue. The premise really was interesting and when the writing was good, it was good. So I hope to read from this author again.

Content warnings:

Spoiler

recollection of rape, child assault assault, violence

“No white people out there. And no God either. A perfect ending.”