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3.59 AVERAGE
3.59 AVERAGE
Interesting enough to keep me reading... but a slow go, and was completely hands in the air toward the end. Not the feel good book of the year...
emotional
reflective
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book isn't for me. There were too many characters and too many time dashes, so I had difficulty following what was going on and why it was important. Also, a bit unnecessarily sexual and morbid for my liking. 65 pages in, and I still don't know what it was about. The writing style is elaborate and flourished, but even that couldn't salvage what seems like a lack substance on a foundational level.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I don’t like to read anything at all (except *maybe* a bare plot outline) about a book or movie before reading/seeing it for many reasons including that I don’t want to be predisposed toward any particular bias. Seemingly innocent adjectives will give things away or set up the mind with certain expectations so I don’t want to do that here. I will just say that it was quite a spectacular, sweeping story told in an interesting way.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
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
I adored this book. I've read a number of reviews indicating that this book is full of "purple prose." I think that criticism is not well thought-out at best, and simply inaccurate at worst. "Purple prose" implies that the writing is unduly ornate, or extravagant, such that the reader is too drawn to the words to read the story. That is the not the case here. While this book is written a bit like a Victorian novel, it is very readable. I mean, who doesn't want to read a Victorian novel that is entirely digestible and just so happens to occur in the 20th- to 21st-century? Me, please.
The writing was very beautiful (but not so beautiful, as noted above, to be distracting), and the characterization was epic. The writing around Mathilde is a dream. What an interesting, cool, kind of horrible, kind of wonderful woman. And I can't help but love all of the Arthurian references (*dork alert*).
Anyway, A+. Not my favorite book this year--that one still sits with The Nest--but it's in my Top 5.
The writing was very beautiful (but not so beautiful, as noted above, to be distracting), and the characterization was epic. The writing around Mathilde is a dream. What an interesting, cool, kind of horrible, kind of wonderful woman. And I can't help but love all of the Arthurian references (*dork alert*).
Anyway, A+. Not my favorite book this year--that one still sits with The Nest--but it's in my Top 5.
I was suprised by how much I enjoyed this book by the time I closed the back cover. You may struggle through the first half, "Fates" as I did, but it is worth it to keep reading until the second half, "Furies" begins. It was hard to put down once I reached the second narrative. At it's base, the novel is a love story, following Mathilde and Lotto throughout their twenty-ish years of flawed and beautiful marriage. It is also a profound and wonderful example of how people can share so much but sometimes understand so little of each other's experience. But does our inability to fully understand our lover's human experience lessen our devotion or feeling for them? A great book deserving of 4.5 stars.
This book is entirely screwed up and I love it for it. A very Franzen-inspired book centering around young love and marriage, with a unexpected feminist twist in showing how differently the female experience is after viewed through a male gaze. It's dark, eye-opening, and brings up the thoughts of wondering if you can ever really know someone at all.
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes