Reviews

Rubik by Elizabeth Tan

adnaram's review against another edition

My noodle is not absorbing it. Perhaps I’ll retry in the future

alexowens's review

5.0

Utterly weird, but strangely addictive - the plots make no sense, then they do, then they don't again... some of the coolest experimental contemporary fiction I've read in a while!

lindy_b's review against another edition

5.0

I am told over and over again that the defining marker of our time is the breakdown of context, particularly on the internet, with its memes and ARGs and fanfiction. When there is no context, we force ourselves to string together series of possibly related events.

Spoiler

We tell ourselves stories in order to live [...] We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience [...] I was supposed to have a script, and had mislaid it. I was supposed to hear cues, and no longer did. I was meant to know the plot, but all I knew was what I saw: flash pictures in variable sequence, images with no 'meaning' beyond their temporary arrangement, not a movie but a cutting-room experience.
-- [a:Joan Didion|238|Joan Didion|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1335450818p2/238.jpg] "The White Album

Rubik is also a critique of late capitalism, where corporations are people and objects have agency. It functions as a form of magic, I suppose.

Spoiler

But I consider that the matter of defining what is real — that is a serious topic, even a vital topic. And in there somewhere is the other topic, the definition of the authentic human. Because the bombardment of pseudo- realities begins to produce inauthentic humans very quickly, spurious humans — as fake as the data pressing at them from all sides. My two topics are really one topic; they unite at this point. Fake realities will create fake humans. Or, fake humans will generate fake realities and then sell them to other humans, turning them, eventually, into forgeries of themselves. So we wind up with fake humans inventing fake realities and then peddling them to other fake humans. It is just a very large version of Disneyland. You can have the Pirate Ride or the Lincoln Simulacrum or Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride — you can have all of them, but none is true.
-- [a:Philip K. Dick|4764|Philip K. Dick|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1264613853p2/4764.jpg] "How to Build a Universe that Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later"

Inception is a terrible movie though, so it annoys me that it's such a point of reference within the text.

belle0_0's review

adventurous challenging

4.0

trashbadger's review

adventurous challenging hopeful mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

kelseybeckett's review

challenging mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot

4.25

pidj's review

adventurous dark funny tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

laz_watts's review

mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

spacerookie's review

4.0

Not entirely what I expected, but delightful, dizzying, trippy, witty, and wonderfully weird. Tan's lyrical prose and leaping metaphors induce spasms of awe and jealousy.

i_masad's review against another edition

5.0

One of the smartest and most interesting books I've read in a long time, both intelligently plotted and gorgeously written. I am in absolute awe of it.