Reviews

Ludmila's Broken English by Dbc Pierre

angus_mckeogh's review

2.0

So this book carried moments of humor and scope and tossed in a few scenes of shock and controversy, but fundamentally it came across as a sophomore effort that was rushed to market on the heels of the success of its predecessor. Muddled and wandering and just not very good. Definitely my least favorite of Pierre’s work.

cmadrenas's review

3.0

Vernon God Little’s a solid favourite but this one wasn’t as good. I think of it kind of as a way better version of Chris Cleave’s Little Bee. Everywhere Little Bee did the Brit-meets-global-South thing wrong (overplayed third-world naivety & ignorance, “struggling” non-white characters with “pasts” who are portrayed as morally flawless, Product (RED) style WASPishness, etc.: the usual stuff really) Ludmila’s Broken English didn’t entirely fuck up. Though it came close, at times. Ludmila’s beautiful-ness was awkwardly overemphasized, and the treatment of disability w/r/t the twins was a little messed up at times… but overall not too horrible. I liked it, I couldn’t not like it, even when certain pages contained upwards of six bad figures of speech for “so-and-so looked at so-and-so” (lots of eyes being “hung on” or “thrown at” people).

albionloveden's review

3.0

Really quite fun, once you get into the swing of the dialogue.

melissamilazzo's review

1.0

Dull, ugly and depressing. I can't believe this won a Booker award. Gave up about halfway through.

thesgtrekkiereads's review

1.0

what a painful book. I couldn't even get through chapter 2 and I gave up... not even planning on giving this a 2nd try...