Reviews

Susan, I know you're dead and wouldn't give a damn even if you weren't. I know that you wrote this in your early 30s and that the 1960s were a weird time in America and that by the time you died, you'd gone on to write lovely and meaningful books that were accessible to the masses as well as the literati and fellow critics. But this "novel" is f√€×ing garbage. The fact that I've had it in the back of my head since I was 16--when I did an author project about you and your writing in Honors English--that I just needed to grow up a little in order to "get" this book now fills me with regret, because 23 years later I finally took the time to get it out of the library and read its whole horrific length and that was time I could have spent enjoying myself. I don't know what to make of it and I don't want to know. I'm sure it's supposed to be all philosophical and crap, and I'm sure my 18-year-old self would have been interested in a close reading, but no thanks.

Highly recommend to those who love inexplicable weirdness, unnecessary books within books, and pretentious, irredeemable main characters.

deborama's review against another edition

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2.0

Very unsatisfying ending. But then I don't think the author was trying to satisfy anyone...

hannahhood's review

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reflective tense slow-paced

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

4.0

nkatha's review against another edition

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4.0

Surreal and I must say, quite frightening.

legsbian's review

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"Diddy bored (now). He's finished the newspaper. Hungry, which always happens on trains. Restless. A conductor comes to collect everyone's ticket. Whose tickets? Our tickets. In an express train which is rapidly passing many stations without stopping, each station identical with the last, Diddy is cooped up among interchangeable people. But being fellow traveler of life, incorrigibly hopeful though sharply disillusioned, he will make the effort to tell one from the other. He casts a moderate, diffused look at the others in the compartment: to stare wouldn't be polite."

I literally can't make this shit up. I couldn't even get to the part where Diddy becomes convinced that he killed someone. Sorry Sontag!

rsonderman13's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Loveable characters? No

2.5

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