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breadandmushrooms's review against another edition
dark
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
2.75
hazelbyers's review
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
meghan111's review
4.0
Issued by a small press called Red Lemonade, this first novel by a Portland writer strikes right to the heart of an alternate near future, where the one war is still going but the second war hasn't quite started, and the bombs are a daily fear but also could just be mostly in your head. The main character Della is in her late 20s, working as a waitress at a vegan-ish diner where the customers debate which country they should move to - Bali, Costa Rica, Sri Lanka? But the time for getting out might have passed, and the overwhelming immense hopeless dread is kind of in her head more than anyplace else, as she thinks things like this:
“When the first box-mall-church went up in the blackberry field I wanted some kind of rampant mass stigmata with blackberry juice for blood. It didn’t happen. It’s not going to. They win; they just roll, pave and drive over everything that’s beautiful: babies, love and small birds."
Della is at loose ends, with an abandoned academic career in geology and a more recent failed career working with her brother as a community activist (their greatest success came when they slightly delayed the building of a Wal-Mart). She is surrounded by all the trappings of left-wing culture, described accurately and lovingly. A wicked, precise sense of humor permeates the novel, mostly in sharp dialogue and satire of the small details of the characters.
The writing is the greatest strength of this book, which meanders a little in plot. Della starts calling in fake bomb threats and eventually falls in with a group of would-be left-wing terrorists living on a farm, but along the way several people drop in and out and we never really get to know them.
“When the first box-mall-church went up in the blackberry field I wanted some kind of rampant mass stigmata with blackberry juice for blood. It didn’t happen. It’s not going to. They win; they just roll, pave and drive over everything that’s beautiful: babies, love and small birds."
Della is at loose ends, with an abandoned academic career in geology and a more recent failed career working with her brother as a community activist (their greatest success came when they slightly delayed the building of a Wal-Mart). She is surrounded by all the trappings of left-wing culture, described accurately and lovingly. A wicked, precise sense of humor permeates the novel, mostly in sharp dialogue and satire of the small details of the characters.
The writing is the greatest strength of this book, which meanders a little in plot. Della starts calling in fake bomb threats and eventually falls in with a group of would-be left-wing terrorists living on a farm, but along the way several people drop in and out and we never really get to know them.
briandice's review
5.0
What a stunning debut novel. I hope to give a full review soon - the last 30 pages are amazing, the final 100 words are some of the best to finish a novel I've read in a long time.
tsharris's review
4.0
This is a hard book to review, not least because it was a hard book to read. It's written from the perspective of Della, a recent Ph.D. in paleontology, who lives in an America not unlike our own but one that is shuddering to breakdown. She's an extremely unreliable narrator, and I can't help but wonder the extent to which the action of the novel occurs inside her head. That said, I really found a lot to like in this novel. Veselka skewers both the excesses of late capitalism and the futility of attempts to destroy it, and through the Zen undertones (the title means seated meditation in Japanese) and the discourses on the long history of the earth, she seems to be saying that ultimately nothing matters.
katdid's review
4.0
But I know what it means to crave what you're not. To want to sew up that rift because it's exhausting to hold it open. Sometimes you just need to be someone else, someone who doesn't care about anything at all. I know I do. I want emptiness but I can't have it.
This has been on my radar for a few years, but it was exactly what I did not need to be reading right now. So it is probably testament to how good it is that I (mostly) enjoyed it anyway. I felt like the protagonist Della and I were a lot alike, except my current obsession is more specifically with authenticity. I imagined the setting as Portland, and then - because certain details, like the fact that Della was a Professor (or called herself one?), put me in mind of this one guy I was recently dating - as New Orleans, which was probably inaccurate (I have no personal experience of New Orleans) but I liked thinking that Della's scene was there, because that scene was nonsense that masked all the very real shit going on underneath.
fourstringspark's review
3.0
This is not a book about Buddhism. Bombs, yes. Buddhism, no. It’s a novel of idealism and disillusionment (and terrorism), set in the Pacific Northwest in a dystopian near-future. Veselka is very impressive in this debut. Her writing is wickedly funny at times, and she excels in her scene setting. My attention wandered toward the end, but overall I enjoyed this.
megatsunami's review
3.0
I feel weird giving this book the same number of stars as "The Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder" because there's an obvious difference in literary quality; but that doesn't necessarily translate into a difference in how much I enjoy a book.
Things I liked: The people felt like real people that I might actually know. I liked the subcultural (punk, vegan, goth, lefty, etc.) atmosphere which felt familiar to me. In some ways I resonated with the concerns of the (somewhat mentally unstable) main character, the sense that action feels meaninglessness in the face of violence and social/ economic injustice.
Things I didn't like: Too nihilistic. At times, the book worked a little too hard at being deep and poetic. I found myself reading quickly because I kind of wanted to get to the hopeful part (I was hoping the end would be hopeful, which it kind of was) rather than enjoying the story.
Things I liked: The people felt like real people that I might actually know. I liked the subcultural (punk, vegan, goth, lefty, etc.) atmosphere which felt familiar to me. In some ways I resonated with the concerns of the (somewhat mentally unstable) main character, the sense that action feels meaninglessness in the face of violence and social/ economic injustice.
Things I didn't like: Too nihilistic. At times, the book worked a little too hard at being deep and poetic. I found myself reading quickly because I kind of wanted to get to the hopeful part (I was hoping the end would be hopeful, which it kind of was) rather than enjoying the story.