Reviews with content warning for Pregnancy - The Anomaly

A multi-layered exploration into life, the universe, and everything, with a lot of wry side-swipes at pop culture as a lot of Big Questions are posed and Core Assumptions challenged. This book manages to be thought-provoking without bogging itself down. It echoed Amores Perros for me, but border, deeper, and . . . French. The cast of characters is almost unwieldy but that observation (or even discomfort), in itself, encourages the reader down a separate rabbit hole of thought and reflection. This is not the book you pick up when you simply want a story to get lost in. It is far better suited to those nights in which you miss your university philosophy course work but don’t want to actually dig out, dust off, or dive into the original texts. For the right moment, an outstanding jumping off-point for some interesting thought experiments.

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atamano's review

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mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

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danpeachey's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

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crizzle's review

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dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

1.5

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pershie13's review

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adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective 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

4.0

Oh boy, how to describe the book that I just read… The Anomaly is a genre-bending, multi-perspective, multi-timeline book that will leave you with more questions than answers. It all takes place over the course of a few months, and the satire, science fiction, and dystopia all wrapped up in one brings you to the end of the book in a hurry. It’s a book about empathy, yet also a book about some of the biggest horrors of life. There’s not much more I can write about The Anomaly without spoiling it, so I’d simply suggest reading it and interpreting it as you wish. You may need to search the internet for answers once you’re done, but this book will leave you thinking about life for a long time. Oh, and that last page is a journey, to say the least!

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ollie_again's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

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znvisser's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I picked up this book because I was intrigued by its premise, and ended up bonding with some interesting characters too. However, none of it was really explored in-depth, because the author tried to cram EVERYTHING into a limited number of pages: there are storylines before, during and after discovering the divergence, and wayyyy too many characters along the way. The author uses all their storylines to explore as many relational, philosophical and political themes and ideas as possible and as a result of all this, nothing really exceeds superficiality.

Furthermore, I ran into quite a few of my pet peeves, which didn’t contribute to my reading experience. The author, through his instrument of the storyteller, exudes an air of arrogance: women are described through a male gaze (even when Lucie meets herself), Nigeria and the US through a European gaze, and religion through an atheist gaze. There was no reason to not explore this more humbly. And on a less serious note: I just don’t enjoy writers writing about writing. It only works for me in very few instances, and this was definitely not one of those. It was made worse by the writer in this book having written a book called ‘the anomaly’ too, which kept popping up so often it became quite central to the story, even quoting from its imaginary pages as if it were the most brilliant thing ever written. Was this supposed to be clever, or funny? Similarly, was it supposed to be clever or funny to make a caricature out of a president that has hurt so many lives?

For me this story would have improved immensely by just sticking to the relational aspect through a limited number of characters. Now it was just an ok read.

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sarah984's review against another edition

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challenging reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

I thought the concept of this book was really cool - the characters are duplicated with a four month gap and have an opportunity to make different choices - but the execution didn't work for me. The setup is way too long and the book is much more about the simulation theory than any of the characters. I never felt really connected to anyone and nothing interesting happened. Also the book within a book of The Anomaly sounded terrible.

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