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maitaylor01's review
3.0
The Nine Lives of Jacob Fallada is a strange book, and sitting at my computer now I am finding it hard to put my thoughts about it into words. At first I just thought it was all very weird, the lack of emotion in the retelling of Jacob’s life, the way each chapter skipped forward so much in time with limited reference to what had gone before, not to mention the very peculiar social experiment that Jacob was subjected to.
As the events of each chapter unfolded, I found myself questioning the reliability of the narrator. After all, how could someone who claims to be so innocent so often find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time? Could this account of Jacob’s life be trusted or was it his distorted view of how his life had gone so wrong? However, as I thought about it more, I came to see just how clever this book really was. If you just took a snapshot of all the bad things that had happened to you and erased all the good, what would your life story look like? Jacob must have had good times in his life, but by choosing not to show those, Neil Randall presents a very clear image of just how easy it is for someone to become isolated, slipping through the cracks of society, scared of showing any emotion to the outside world.
All in all, this is an extremely thought-provoking book that gave me a lot more than I bargained for.
As the events of each chapter unfolded, I found myself questioning the reliability of the narrator. After all, how could someone who claims to be so innocent so often find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time? Could this account of Jacob’s life be trusted or was it his distorted view of how his life had gone so wrong? However, as I thought about it more, I came to see just how clever this book really was. If you just took a snapshot of all the bad things that had happened to you and erased all the good, what would your life story look like? Jacob must have had good times in his life, but by choosing not to show those, Neil Randall presents a very clear image of just how easy it is for someone to become isolated, slipping through the cracks of society, scared of showing any emotion to the outside world.
All in all, this is an extremely thought-provoking book that gave me a lot more than I bargained for.
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