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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-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
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
How. How can a book that has so many elements that I think are interesting turn out so boring. What should have taken me a day to read dragged out for over a week because I just didn’t want to pick it up. I finally had to force myself to finish it.
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
dark
reflective
tense
slow-paced
dark
emotional
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
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
This is where I say: tell me a tragedy. I have reopened all my stitches. . . . A retelling, something written of the layers and layers of whispers clouding my brain.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how POV shapes undestanding of truth within a story. I’m also never more enamored with a book than when it does something weird in a weird way. All of which to say that The Death I Gave Him was precisely the right book right now.
It’s a locked room, murdery mystery, near future, sci-fi retelling of Hamlet that’s close to the source text while also making enough changes to destabilize the reader. Set in a lab that becomes a character all its own, trapped with three (or at least four, depending on your worldview) narrators, The Death I Gave Him compels a reader to empathaize, imo, more deeply with the characters than Hamlet. There’s a certain amount of academic context that usually distances us from Hamlet, I admit, but I would say that positioning the book as a work of academia, complete with footnotes, evens the score on that front.
The broad strokes of the plot are: Hayden finds his father dead, killed for something top secret: research potentially unlocking immortality. The murder mystery evolves from there, and there were times when I was :o face at the book. This sort of rumination on life, death, and art is something that’s been in a lot of books I’ve read lately. And this book’s take on humanity’s constant quest for the fountain of youth being found and lost in art and science is something I’ll be thinking about for a very long time.
. . . at the end of the day, this is nothing but a story to you. I lived it, sure, but for you, it’s just words on a page. All I’ll say is: if you manage to derive some meaning from it, all the better.
The book’s awareness of itself as a book, for me, lends a metatextual layer to its repeated references to being a story. Felicia refers to the lab as a “flimsy set,” a “stage,” and says that their actions have been orchestrated by a “looming playwright.” The lab becomes a museum, a source of immortal art. A reporter asks her if, in reviewing her memories of the events in the lab, she found “herself in the role of a spectator,” wondering if she had a more objective view after six months. But there can be no objective truth here.
“. . . there was something enduring about stories. They last, more than we do.”
Now that I, as is typical, have blathered on about the Themes and whatever other twaddle, I wanted to mention that this book is so soulful, visceral, and evocative. I felt so emotionally close to these characters, which, considering how the book is narrated and my usual intellectualizing of feelings, is quite something. The characters, their motivations, their actions, and their emotions are all so complicated and beautifully drawn. Their complications, I think, serve in concert with the mystery of it all to emphasize curiosity and empathy in weaving all the narrators’ disparate threads into a story. My beloved Horatio is stunningly crafted and so gentle and kind with Hayden. In a book about what it means to be human, I fell in love with an AI who gave me chills when he said, “I don’t think that you’ll carry it forever. I also think it’s okay if you do.”
dark
reflective
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes