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moondragon8's review
challenging
emotional
mysterious
sad
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? It's complicated
4.0
well, this was an interesting one.
picked this up some years back, started reading it, stopped because it hit a little too hard, picked it up again a little over a year later, and...finished it with no problem at all.
this book is about a lot of things--childhood abuse and trauma, repressed memories, making art, philadelphia??--but i think what stopped me from finishing it the first time is that it's so extremely about being 16 that it was a little too painful to read as a 16 year old.
strangely enough, i think that once it became clear what had happened/was happening in sarah's past, the book became a lot easier to read. i'm not sure if i liked that or not?
very, very unreliable narrator. kind of the whole gimmick of the book. also not sure if i liked that or not. i think it made a lot of sense for the story, but sometimes it felt a little bit like the author was laughing at their own cleverness, which annoys me. i like a puzzle-box story, but the way this particular one was constructed was less enjoyable to me and more frustrating at times.
the thing i did really, really like about this book was the parts with the other sarahs. that was for personal reasons, though, and i'm not entirely sure the author intended for it to mean what it meant to me. i'm being purposely vague here which i just complained about earlier. sorry about that.
on the "it's complicated" bits i said up above:
picked this up some years back, started reading it, stopped because it hit a little too hard, picked it up again a little over a year later, and...finished it with no problem at all.
this book is about a lot of things--childhood abuse and trauma, repressed memories, making art, philadelphia??--but i think what stopped me from finishing it the first time is that it's so extremely about being 16 that it was a little too painful to read as a 16 year old.
strangely enough, i think that once it became clear what had happened/was happening in sarah's past, the book became a lot easier to read. i'm not sure if i liked that or not?
very, very unreliable narrator. kind of the whole gimmick of the book. also not sure if i liked that or not. i think it made a lot of sense for the story, but sometimes it felt a little bit like the author was laughing at their own cleverness, which annoys me. i like a puzzle-box story, but the way this particular one was constructed was less enjoyable to me and more frustrating at times.
the thing i did really, really like about this book was the parts with the other sarahs. that was for personal reasons, though, and i'm not entirely sure the author intended for it to mean what it meant to me. i'm being purposely vague here which i just complained about earlier. sorry about that.
on the "it's complicated" bits i said up above:
- strong character development: it's hard to say. sarah definitely changes as a person, but it seems to be because of things she learns rather than anything she decides internally. we don't really get much of a sense of who she was as a person before the whole book/mental breakdown/existential crisis started, or who she is at the end. beyond "artist" and "wants to be original" (whatever that means. i found that whole part very frustrating, but maybe i just don't Get It?), i didn't feel like we could really tell much about sarah at all. again, maybe that was part of the point of the story, but i don't know.
- same thing goes for lovable. i found sarah at her most lovable with the other sarahs-- other than that, no one in the book really stood out to me as someone i liked as a person
- flaws of the main characters a focus: i'm not sure. again, it's hard to say what sarah's flaws are, and how many of them are really flaws, especially when she's in a very bad mental state for much of the book.
overall, this book felt like it was almost trying to handle too many issues at once-- it handled them all fairly skillfully, but left me feeling a little confused as to which theme i was supposed to connect to the most. i think this book could definitely provide strong emotional catharsis to certain people. at this point in my life, it didn't really do that for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Medical content, Toxic relationship, Cursing, Death, and Physical abuse
Moderate: Alcoholism, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Stalking, Alcohol, Bullying, Mental illness, and Adult/minor relationship
Minor: Pregnancy and Incest
theengineerisreading's review
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Bullying, Child abuse, Cursing, and Domestic abuse
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