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3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
A slow plot that is very layered and deals with complex topics
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
It feels dreamy despite the very grounded language used? Others describe it as Kafka-esque, and I guess I see why. The book's overall theme is quite tragic, but the book proceeds beautifully ; more curious moments than intense moments, and there's quite a stark contrast between the narrator's recounted beautiful moments (or memories, as you can call them) and the dystopian context of the island. The narrator's daily life is composed of beautiful moments up until an inevitable, tragic end, and she watches each fleeting moment with more passing melancholy than outright anger. Almost like she's trying to forget what haunts her in the first place.
There's one thing in the book that stuck with me. Memories don't just ground us in the past. Maybe we forget all the details and the perception of it during its time, but what it leaves behind is, as R says, a sprout waiting to grow back, and our perception of memories constantly changes as time proceeds forward. There's timeless beauty to everything from the past, almost as if our entire existence depends on it, and when we forget the memory, we might very well forget the beauty of things we once cherished. We lose a part of ourselves. This also reminds me of a discussion we had in a philosophy class about personal identity. If our memories are lost, is our identity lost? Are we just an empty vessel that drifts around aimlessly? What makes us us? What makes this novel interesting is that the dystopia in which the author is set never provides an overarching answer to why the police do what they do. Banning fruits, body parts, boats, books - all of these actions seem very arbitrary. There's no transparent end goal - only the residents are left suffering in the end, taking personal losses from a fate that they have no control over. They're left grappling with a self-annihilation that forces them to try to recount what's truly core to them, what truly matters to them. Even as objects are lost, we see people always finding limits. When one thing core to them is forced to fade, they find themselves unable to adapt to a world without it because a world without these precious memories is to them a fate no different from death.
It's prescient, too. We live in an age where constant novelty from new technology makes us discard things at an equally fast rate. There are many stories in memories that are left untold, moments that stay alive until they are forgotten. And to hide it isn't just hiding truths themselves, but confining us to a constant cycle of death, where we inevitably feel emptier.
There's one thing in the book that stuck with me. Memories don't just ground us in the past. Maybe we forget all the details and the perception of it during its time, but what it leaves behind is, as R says, a sprout waiting to grow back, and our perception of memories constantly changes as time proceeds forward. There's timeless beauty to everything from the past, almost as if our entire existence depends on it, and when we forget the memory, we might very well forget the beauty of things we once cherished. We lose a part of ourselves. This also reminds me of a discussion we had in a philosophy class about personal identity. If our memories are lost, is our identity lost? Are we just an empty vessel that drifts around aimlessly? What makes us us? What makes this novel interesting is that the dystopia in which the author is set never provides an overarching answer to why the police do what they do. Banning fruits, body parts, boats, books - all of these actions seem very arbitrary. There's no transparent end goal - only the residents are left suffering in the end, taking personal losses from a fate that they have no control over. They're left grappling with a self-annihilation that forces them to try to recount what's truly core to them, what truly matters to them. Even as objects are lost, we see people always finding limits. When one thing core to them is forced to fade, they find themselves unable to adapt to a world without it because a world without these precious memories is to them a fate no different from death.
It's prescient, too. We live in an age where constant novelty from new technology makes us discard things at an equally fast rate. There are many stories in memories that are left untold, moments that stay alive until they are forgotten. And to hide it isn't just hiding truths themselves, but confining us to a constant cycle of death, where we inevitably feel emptier.
challenging
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Yes
dark
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
medium-paced
I feel like I spent the entire book wondering what was happening and why it was happening and still 20 pages away from finishing I still had no idea on what kind of message she was trying to convey. I felt like the book had some climaxes but even then I would say the book is quite a sleepy and simplistic one. If anything I enjoyed the relationship between the narrator, the old man, and R and their character development.
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
i need to sit with this one and possibly reread. i liked it and i think it’s an important story
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No