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3.95 AVERAGE
3.95 AVERAGE
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
slow-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
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Absolutely loved this. I read it breathlessly. I feel bereft now without Dave Win in my life
emotional
reflective
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:
No
A beautiful and timely account. A story of a life, of a man reconciling with his race, queerness, and the changing world. I thought it a stunning read, although it took the readers’s knowledge of contemporary Britain for granted. The ending was devastating but I would still recommend this book
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
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
A more detailed review to come. This stunningly beautiful and moving novel focuses on the life of a richly drawn lead, David. We move with David from boyhood in the 1960s through Covid lockdown, and the personal journey is compelling. David"s life though serves as a vehicle for exploring issues of class, race, sexual and romantic identification, and the ways in which beauty and intellect are ground down more and more under the bootheel of acquisitiveness and hatred.
Time for that (slightly) more detailed review!
I am not sure if a story can be called an epic while also being quiet and intimate, but to me at least this book was simultaneously epic in scope and intimate in its moments. (If I had to compare the style to any other writer I would point to Henry James, but more British.) We meet our hero, David, as a young scholarship student, dark-skinned and half-Burmese at a lily-white elite prep school. David's life becomes moderately entangled with that of Giles, a boy who bullies him and whose kind and unfailingly decent father is Dave's benefactor. Giles and his family continue to have an outsize impact on David's life for the roughly 50 years covered in the book, though Glies and David barely see one another one-on-one after leaving school. As in any life, there are people we brush up against who leave a lasting mark and others who are constants but who don't much change our trajectories. In this book we meet lots of people who fall into both of these camps, and in the places in between, and all of them are interesting and intricately drawn. The focus though never shifts from David, an actor and later a writer struggling in a world not built to embrace him as a person of color, a Gay man, or as an artist. I don't want to tell any of the story, letting it unfold in its time is one of the things that make this gorgeously crafted story a joy to read. I will mention that though this is very much about David, it is equally about England and the limitations placed on people, even the best and the brightest who have been given some but not all keys to the castle, as David certainly is. These limitations are many but primarily those based on race, class, gender, and sexual identity, all of which define Dave's life, and those of the people around him.
Coincidentally, my first read completed in 2024, The House of Doors, was about many of the same things as this novel, and both have turned out to be grand ways to start my reading year.
Time for that (slightly) more detailed review!
I am not sure if a story can be called an epic while also being quiet and intimate, but to me at least this book was simultaneously epic in scope and intimate in its moments. (If I had to compare the style to any other writer I would point to Henry James, but more British.) We meet our hero, David, as a young scholarship student, dark-skinned and half-Burmese at a lily-white elite prep school. David's life becomes moderately entangled with that of Giles, a boy who bullies him and whose kind and unfailingly decent father is Dave's benefactor. Giles and his family continue to have an outsize impact on David's life for the roughly 50 years covered in the book, though Glies and David barely see one another one-on-one after leaving school. As in any life, there are people we brush up against who leave a lasting mark and others who are constants but who don't much change our trajectories. In this book we meet lots of people who fall into both of these camps, and in the places in between, and all of them are interesting and intricately drawn. The focus though never shifts from David, an actor and later a writer struggling in a world not built to embrace him as a person of color, a Gay man, or as an artist. I don't want to tell any of the story, letting it unfold in its time is one of the things that make this gorgeously crafted story a joy to read. I will mention that though this is very much about David, it is equally about England and the limitations placed on people, even the best and the brightest who have been given some but not all keys to the castle, as David certainly is. These limitations are many but primarily those based on race, class, gender, and sexual identity, all of which define Dave's life, and those of the people around him.
Coincidentally, my first read completed in 2024, The House of Doors, was about many of the same things as this novel, and both have turned out to be grand ways to start my reading year.
