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3.74 AVERAGE
3.74 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Darnielle is one of my favorite musicians; I’m excited to find that his writing talents extend not just to great lyrics but also to entrancing prose.
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Content Warnings
Moderate: Self harm, Suicide attempt
It's difficult for me to rate this book because it's not really the kind of thing I'm used to. So I tried to rate it for what it is. This book kind of frustrated me because it always talked like I already knew something it didn't already cover. ("Kimmy? Who's Kimmy? Have I read about her before?" *flips back to check*) It feels like it's written backwards. It's a wild mix of flashbacks and short bits of story with no beginnings or endings that left me searching for what was going on and who these characters were. In the end, I didn't really 'get it.' I couldn't really understand the motivations behind Sean. Perhaps I'm just not the brightest reader out there. I just prefer a normal story with a beginning, middle, and ending, with climaxes, plot twists, and the like. However, this book does seem to provide good bits of writing that really brought me into the setting, however unorganized it seemed to be. Sean's thoughts are interesting too, and it kept me reading through to the end. I'd recommend reading it in as few sittings as possible, though.
Not a book I was expecting to like, but it was well done and had plenty of minor twists in it that made it a really interesting read.
Fantastic book that read like along format Mountain Goats song. The story itself made an impression on me because of the imagery surrounding the feelings of "lost" that come hand in hand with being a teenager. My biggest issue was the plot, or often lack there of. While the story was a wonderful story, nothing felt entirely "purposeful". Though it likely did not NEED a purpose, it did leave me a little wanting.
'Wolf in White Van' by John Darnielle is a book professional critics loved but it left me feeling meh. It seemed to me it was a domestic fiction about using one’s imagination to escape Reality, to give oneself meaning to get up every day. Having finished the book [b:Cloud Cuckoo Land|56783258|Cloud Cuckoo Land|Anthony Doerr|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1618589128l/56783258._SY75_.jpg|88757679] recently, I especially understood this, the main theme of 'Wolf in White Van'. Both novels are about the power of imagination, of myths, of creative storytelling, to take a person away and out of the reality of an actual life that feels unbearable. Stories that make the unbearable bearable, to provide the random purposelessness of life with meaning.
I copied the book blurb:
""Welcome to Trace Italian, a game of strategy and survival! You may now make your first move.""
"Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of 17, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in Southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined. As the creator of Trace Italian - a text-based, roleplaying game played through the mail - Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America.
Lance and Carrie are high school students from Florida, explorers of the Trace. But when they take their play into the real world, disaster strikes, and Sean is called to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, tunneling toward the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live.
Brilliantly constructed, Wolf in White Van unfolds in reverse until we arrive at both the beginning and the climax: the event that has shaped so much of Sean’s life. Beautifully written and unexpectedly moving, John Darnielle’s audacious and gripping debut novel is a marvel of storytelling brio and genuine literary delicacy.
Sean Phillips does not use his imagination to escape into a friendlier place. He develops a text game, delivered by mail, which is set in a dark and damaged landscape. Players wander about a radioactive hellscape, trying to avoid dying from radiation, murder, suicide and monsters. Of course, the players make the wrong choices, and die. A lot. A number of invested players love it! Sean makes some money from the players buying a subscription to his game, enough to keep the wolf away from his door, right? But it is his parents and health insurance benefits who support him, in more ways than one. He has a ruined face, with a damaged mouth and rebuilt cheeks, and his nose is gone.
The main character Sean is the kind of person I cannot understand. He had a good face until he was seventeen years old, the regular life of an ordinary middle-class teenager, good parents, good friends. I got the impression he felt none of it had meaning. After he suffers a terrible injury to his face, he invented his game world of a radioactive apocalypse, centered in Missouri and Kansas. He also now has a meaning to his life because, not in spite of, he is too ugly to look at for most people, although some people handle it. I believe the new ugly outside on his face visible to people is mediating the ugly he feels on the inside, gentle reader, giving him redemption.
Wow. The book is a delicate landscape which enchanted professional critics. For myself, I could barely keep the sneer off of my whole and ordinary face. I do not have the capability of having sympathy for such a character.
This isn't the first book I've read about listless bored young males without enough imagination to create a good purpose or meaning in their Western middle-class lives, despite resources, and arguably privileged, imho, who spend their days in a misery of what is essentially, apparently, soul-killing boredom, imho. It must be an affliction! I guess. Thank goodness for the hours one can bury oneself in video games killing everyone! It is one I never knew because I was more concerned about actually surviving rotten parenting, real-life escapes of near-death traumas and soul-killing poverty. My imagination revolved around heroes and heroic rescues, not about trudging around landscapes picking up tchotchkes, avoiding or intentionally picking fights with monsters. Gag me.
Sad bored boy with empty soul, so touching. Not.
I copied the book blurb:
""Welcome to Trace Italian, a game of strategy and survival! You may now make your first move.""
"Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of 17, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in Southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined. As the creator of Trace Italian - a text-based, roleplaying game played through the mail - Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America.
Lance and Carrie are high school students from Florida, explorers of the Trace. But when they take their play into the real world, disaster strikes, and Sean is called to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, tunneling toward the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live.
Brilliantly constructed, Wolf in White Van unfolds in reverse until we arrive at both the beginning and the climax: the event that has shaped so much of Sean’s life. Beautifully written and unexpectedly moving, John Darnielle’s audacious and gripping debut novel is a marvel of storytelling brio and genuine literary delicacy.
Sean Phillips does not use his imagination to escape into a friendlier place. He develops a text game, delivered by mail, which is set in a dark and damaged landscape. Players wander about a radioactive hellscape, trying to avoid dying from radiation, murder, suicide and monsters. Of course, the players make the wrong choices, and die. A lot. A number of invested players love it! Sean makes some money from the players buying a subscription to his game, enough to keep the wolf away from his door, right? But it is his parents and health insurance benefits who support him, in more ways than one. He has a ruined face, with a damaged mouth and rebuilt cheeks, and his nose is gone.
The main character Sean is the kind of person I cannot understand. He had a good face until he was seventeen years old, the regular life of an ordinary middle-class teenager, good parents, good friends. I got the impression he felt none of it had meaning.
Spoiler
He decides to kill himself. It is unsuccessful. He had originally planned to shoot his parents dead while they slept in their bedroom, then kill himself with a bullet by shooting up under his jaw.Wow. The book is a delicate landscape which enchanted professional critics. For myself, I could barely keep the sneer off of my whole and ordinary face. I do not have the capability of having sympathy for such a character.
Spoiler
Because of ennui, basically, not any other deeper cause like bullying or crappy parents, he was going to end his life and stimulate himself into feelings of fulfillment by indulging in a mass shooting, like a killer who shoots up innocent people at their middle school.This isn't the first book I've read about listless bored young males without enough imagination to create a good purpose or meaning in their Western middle-class lives, despite resources, and arguably privileged, imho, who spend their days in a misery of what is essentially, apparently, soul-killing boredom, imho. It must be an affliction! I guess. Thank goodness for the hours one can bury oneself in video games killing everyone! It is one I never knew because I was more concerned about actually surviving rotten parenting, real-life escapes of near-death traumas and soul-killing poverty. My imagination revolved around heroes and heroic rescues, not about trudging around landscapes picking up tchotchkes, avoiding or intentionally picking fights with monsters. Gag me.
Sad bored boy with empty soul, so touching. Not.
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
3.5 stars
Masterful writing to experience what's in another person's head, so convincingly; it's amazing to find Sean's flatness to be believable. He seems to be so even-keeled in a situation that I would personally expect to make me into an awful person.
I didn't mind the non-chronological line of the story, but be warned that it does get dark at the end.
The contrast between Trace Italian's cause/effect structure and Sean's own seeming lack-of-cause is, for me, the most interesting part of this book.
Masterful writing to experience what's in another person's head, so convincingly; it's amazing to find Sean's flatness to be believable. He seems to be so even-keeled in a situation that I would personally expect to make me into an awful person.
I didn't mind the non-chronological line of the story, but be warned that it does get dark at the end.
The contrast between Trace Italian's cause/effect structure and Sean's own seeming lack-of-cause is, for me, the most interesting part of this book.