Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - Kairos

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Reviews tagging 'Misogyny'

Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck

16 reviews

vcatterson's review against another edition

1.0

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I was excited to read this to get a view on what day to day life was like in East Germany in the 1980s. This aspect of the book was certainly interesting, but I disliked the characters from very near the start. Then halfway through, an event caused one character to double down on his toxic traits, and it became unintentionally a horror story. He was the narcissistic, substantially older member of a relationship with his much younger mistress, and exploited the power dynamic in multiple ways. The book didn’t really highlight this as problematic, or redeem the situation in any way. Just an unpleasant read overall.

Content Warnings

willow_thewisp's review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Content Warnings

notthatcosta's review against another edition

1.75

challenging dark sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I desperately wanted to like this book, but the more I tried to get into it the more difficult it became to pick up, because I fundamentally didn't enjoy it.

Kairos has been lauded with accolades, including the International Booker prize, and was even gushed upon by the shopkeeper who was checking the book out when I bought it. Naturally, I was very excited to get into it and expecting to be blown away. Unfortunately, I was almost immediately disappointed by how dense, meandering and downright baffling the prose were.

I think the book suffers from a few flaws, but above all, the protagonist feels uninteresting and anonymous throughout the book, making it difficult to engage in her plight or feel anything for her at all beyond a dull pity. I think a lot of this is down to it being written in the third person, whereas a first person account of the events would have given us a bit more insight. The detachment I felt from the main characters made Katherina's determination to stay with Hans despite him seeming awful with no redeeming characteristics and her living in another city and having a present support system (who knew about how fucked up Hans was???) even more baffling.

Another issue is the sheer span of time the book covers (seemingly 5 or so years), and how poorly that was handled. The pacing was atrocious, with months passing within the span of a few lines despite other parts lingering on micro moments within a day.

It wasn't all bad, though, I thought the world building of East Germany was really successful and made me wish the storytelling was done better.

Content Warnings

hegesteindal74's review against another edition

3.5

dark informative sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: N/A

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

philippmk's review against another edition

3.25

challenging dark medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Content Warnings

hellaalleh's review against another edition

4.0

challenging emotional informative reflective tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

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