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4.02 AVERAGE
4.02 AVERAGE
dark
inspiring
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Okay so first of all, this book is fantastic.
At one point I fell asleep listening to the audiobook and had to go back several hours afterwards. I didn't remember anything from that period, except as time went on, I also did? Like I was remembering a dream as I read it. Anyway, if you can somehow arrange that particular reading experience for this particular book, wow can I recommend that, too.
At one point I fell asleep listening to the audiobook and had to go back several hours afterwards. I didn't remember anything from that period, except as time went on, I also did? Like I was remembering a dream as I read it. Anyway, if you can somehow arrange that particular reading experience for this particular book, wow can I recommend that, too.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I listened to the audiobook version of this and the narration was very good. I liked the range of characters and the lives they built for themselves. I liked the descriptions and the senses they used to tell the story.
'Sorrowland', as is seemingly usual for author Rivers Solomon, is an unusually startling and fascinating novel! Solomon creates characters and world building that are in the top ten of the most striking I've ever read. But, as usual, two-thirds into their novels I find myself feeling appalled. It's as if I am reading a manifesto written by someone like the terrorist character Marco Inaros from the video series 'The Expanse'. Their books are like something I might have written when I was starting therapy for PTSD. As usual, their novel is all howling rage and feral screams, continuously relentlessly a novel of feeling hurt.
I have copied the book blurb:
Vern - seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised - flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins, and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world.
But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes.
To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past, and more troublingly, the future - outside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering the secrets of the compound she fled but also the violent history in America that produced it.
'Sorrowland' is to me ultimately a relentless one-sided black-and-white manifesto. I simply can't like Solomon's novels. I am with them on the same pages of rage because I have been on the same pages. But their characters become the monsters they are fighting. I get it. And they like being a monster, revel in being a monster, but without recognition they've become indistinguishable from the bad guys. I get that, too, having been there. The main character also often craves love, often a rotten kind of love, and is a person bad at love, even after they've gotten some experience and hindsight. This I don't get. But clearly we readers are supposed to, maybe, see the difference of characters' behavior because the heroine has a righteous cause, even if they look like the same kind of heartless monster in spirit if not in acts to this reader, anyway, a victim who never rises above or sees beyond an either/or sense of choices. To me, the main narrator is too much scream, even after events should have moderated her emotions, or grown her into 3 dimensions of being. Vern never becomes more than two-dimensional.
Solomon doesn't do nuances. Their characters never seem to feel any redemption. Their main characters never overcome or understand their demons even while they achieve some justice. They seem to embrace their pain and rage and do not try to work with it, they become rage and pain without reservations. The main character does good with hate, full of suspicions about the concept of Goodness. I get that having been there. But I never really see these main characters of Solomon resolve their pain. They become the pain and bad love and never move off of that spot.
I wanted to like 'Sorrowland', but I don't like blinkered visions or extremist manifestos.
I have copied the book blurb:
Vern - seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised - flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins, and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world.
But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes.
To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past, and more troublingly, the future - outside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering the secrets of the compound she fled but also the violent history in America that produced it.
'Sorrowland' is to me ultimately a relentless one-sided black-and-white manifesto. I simply can't like Solomon's novels. I am with them on the same pages of rage because I have been on the same pages. But their characters become the monsters they are fighting. I get it. And they like being a monster, revel in being a monster, but without recognition they've become indistinguishable from the bad guys. I get that, too, having been there. The main character also often craves love, often a rotten kind of love, and is a person bad at love, even after they've gotten some experience and hindsight. This I don't get. But clearly we readers are supposed to, maybe, see the difference of characters' behavior because the heroine has a righteous cause, even if they look like the same kind of heartless monster in spirit if not in acts to this reader, anyway, a victim who never rises above or sees beyond an either/or sense of choices. To me, the main narrator is too much scream, even after events should have moderated her emotions, or grown her into 3 dimensions of being. Vern never becomes more than two-dimensional.
Solomon doesn't do nuances. Their characters never seem to feel any redemption. Their main characters never overcome or understand their demons even while they achieve some justice. They seem to embrace their pain and rage and do not try to work with it, they become rage and pain without reservations. The main character does good with hate, full of suspicions about the concept of Goodness. I get that having been there. But I never really see these main characters of Solomon resolve their pain. They become the pain and bad love and never move off of that spot.
I wanted to like 'Sorrowland', but I don't like blinkered visions or extremist manifestos.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Rivers Soloman est un romancier doué et ambitieux. Je suis accro à ce qu'ils font
This has to be one of the strangest books I have ever read! While there is beautiful, bold writing and symbolism aplenty, the “passenger” is just too weird a concept for me. I am glad I read it but be prepared for something otherworldly!
This started off slow and finished balls to the walls bananas. That being said, as always with Rivers Solomon I appreciated how this book tied back into the horrors we experience as Black folks. I think this book asks a great question re: the world and if it’s good anywhere (sounds like the answer is no) and approaches the intergenerational and cultural drama of Black folks in wild, but interesting ways. There were definitely times where I was confused but this was definitely interesting.
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes