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3.91 AVERAGE
3.91 AVERAGE
challenging
reflective
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:
Yes
Dear Goodreads, can I have a few more stars to rate this fabulous book?
I actually really enjoyed the writing and story until I hit alternate reality 4. I may come back to this one later, and I will certainly look for more by this author.
I would say it is a little bit pretentious. It tries to be such a brilliant piece in which 4 different parallel lives take place yet it ends up being somehow slow and confusing at various points. The end I totally disliked it because in my opinion it just aimed too far.
It is very interesting how it portrays the different events in the context of the America in which the story is staged, I enjoyed reading this kind of " where were you at when this famous incident happened?" because of course it is shown where is the main character at several important moments of contemporary history.
The background history of the main character is nicely plotted, you may like him or not but I believed it is a worked character.
Despite the great idea of this book, the worst part was definitely it's written structure: paragraphs that would cover a complete page. Very long sentences and quite extensive chapters as well. All this made the reading very heavy.
It is very interesting how it portrays the different events in the context of the America in which the story is staged, I enjoyed reading this kind of " where were you at when this famous incident happened?" because of course it is shown where is the main character at several important moments of contemporary history.
The background history of the main character is nicely plotted, you may like him or not but I believed it is a worked character.
Despite the great idea of this book, the worst part was definitely it's written structure: paragraphs that would cover a complete page. Very long sentences and quite extensive chapters as well. All this made the reading very heavy.
emotional
inspiring
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
This did not work for me. In any way. For all 800+ gimmicky pages. While there were moments of genius in here, they were few and far between and far outnumbered by the weight of a convoluted attempt at creativity. Ways to make this book better:
1. Not be a book.
2. Be 4 books.
I regret my time spent reading this but there's no way around it when you create ridiculous arbitrary goals like reading every book shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. I did this to myself. I can only hope you don't make the same decision I did.
1. Not be a book.
2. Be 4 books.
I regret my time spent reading this but there's no way around it when you create ridiculous arbitrary goals like reading every book shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. I did this to myself. I can only hope you don't make the same decision I did.
I will begin with a confession that I have never read anything like 4 3 2 1. And, that is what made reading it partly fascinating and partly exhausting for me, not to mention a bit confusing too on several occasions. The story sort of outlines the butterfly effect, or the belief that small causes can have larger effects. It starts a little before March 3, 1947, in Newark, New Jersey, where Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the one and only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson is born. And from here, the writer takes you along on the journey of 4 different Archi's ( as our protagonist likes to be known ) lives and the way it takes varied twists and turns in response on the various triggers that lay in the path. The same boy with the same DNA and the same set of parents walks an entirely different path in his life as if the circumstances of his birth are fed into a random generator which produces out a new kind of life with every iteration.
I loved the idea of exploring how an individual's life could vary so much by some seemingly meaningless triggers or events. The book, I am sure will force every reader to ponder over several what-ifs of his/her life during the course of the book. I sure did! As much as we desire to be control of our lives, it is not always so. I realised that there are countless determinants and influences in our lives over which we have no control whatsoever. Blinded by hubris, we don't often realise that a lot happens in our lives and in the spheres that touch it that happenstance or a result of several things going right/wrong. For example, all the 4 "Archi"s in our stories become writers, but what they write about, how they write and why they write what they write is different. It makes you pause and marvel at the various influences we have around us, of both kinds, the good and the bad. And we don't even realise that we have been influenced until much later in our lives. This intrigue was the biggest reason I plodded on with this book. And the way historical events such as the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement and the assassination of President Kennedy influence our protagonist's life is compelling enough to read ahead on several occasions.
As interesting as the premise sounds, it also comes with its own set of complications. It is this unpredictable nature that keeps thing interesting for the reader. At 800+ pages it is one the longest books I have read off late, a task made more difficult by the fact that the sentences are long, really long. That and plenty of American pop culture references made it a moderately difficult read for me. It got pretty annoying at a few places I will confess, I had a lot of difficulty in keeping a calm hand and not ditch the book on those instances. The task was made difficult by the fact that every time the story flips to a different Archi, it is completely different from the previous one. The author does leave some breadcrumbs at the beginning of each chapter, but they were not always adequate for me. At some point, the reader is bound to lose track of which Archi is doing what. Each of his 4 lives is divided into episodes, and they are presented to the reader together. For example, the first part of the book takes you through 4 childhoods that Archi grows out of, each varying quite a lot from another.
In a nutshell, it is not an easy book to read. It tested my patience, I read it over 6-7 weeks, taking breaks quite often. Having said that, it is most certainly a wonderfully unorthodox piece of fiction. Difficult but certainly not dull I would say!
I loved the idea of exploring how an individual's life could vary so much by some seemingly meaningless triggers or events. The book, I am sure will force every reader to ponder over several what-ifs of his/her life during the course of the book. I sure did! As much as we desire to be control of our lives, it is not always so. I realised that there are countless determinants and influences in our lives over which we have no control whatsoever. Blinded by hubris, we don't often realise that a lot happens in our lives and in the spheres that touch it that happenstance or a result of several things going right/wrong. For example, all the 4 "Archi"s in our stories become writers, but what they write about, how they write and why they write what they write is different. It makes you pause and marvel at the various influences we have around us, of both kinds, the good and the bad. And we don't even realise that we have been influenced until much later in our lives. This intrigue was the biggest reason I plodded on with this book. And the way historical events such as the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement and the assassination of President Kennedy influence our protagonist's life is compelling enough to read ahead on several occasions.
As interesting as the premise sounds, it also comes with its own set of complications. It is this unpredictable nature that keeps thing interesting for the reader. At 800+ pages it is one the longest books I have read off late, a task made more difficult by the fact that the sentences are long, really long. That and plenty of American pop culture references made it a moderately difficult read for me. It got pretty annoying at a few places I will confess, I had a lot of difficulty in keeping a calm hand and not ditch the book on those instances. The task was made difficult by the fact that every time the story flips to a different Archi, it is completely different from the previous one. The author does leave some breadcrumbs at the beginning of each chapter, but they were not always adequate for me. At some point, the reader is bound to lose track of which Archi is doing what. Each of his 4 lives is divided into episodes, and they are presented to the reader together. For example, the first part of the book takes you through 4 childhoods that Archi grows out of, each varying quite a lot from another.
In a nutshell, it is not an easy book to read. It tested my patience, I read it over 6-7 weeks, taking breaks quite often. Having said that, it is most certainly a wonderfully unorthodox piece of fiction. Difficult but certainly not dull I would say!
This book took a significant amount of effort to get through, and I imagine it took even more to write. I often ponder the path my life has taken, and how certain decisions have sent it down a particular path, so the premise of 4 different versions of the same life appealed to me. I expected a firmer judgement on the lives, that one of them would be clearly better than the other, a point to say "This is where it all went wrong", but of course they all had benefits and costs, and just like real life, Ferguson just chose the best path he could at the time.
I'm conflicted on the rating - on the one hand I very much admire the detail and the effort required to craft not one, but essentially four different novels, and it feels such an undertaking deserves 4 stars for simply completing such a large, thoughtful and complex story. However, I wavered between 3 and 4 stars often while reading it, and particularly around the sections when Ferguson is in college, which is when a lot of other readers also felt the story lagged. I found the prose quite unusual....consistently very long sentences, some up to a page in length, and while in some cases it lent an urgency, in others it was confusing and I would have to re-read the sentence to understand the subject and intent. It wasn't so much an entertaining read, as a worthwhile one; so I didn't love it, but I'm glad I've read it.
This book will not appeal to many - it's over 800 pages, and it can be difficult to keep track of which version of Ferguson's life you are reading at times. I feel it's a book that would improve on second reading, and rather than reading it straight through again, I would like to read the 4 versions of life individually, ie 1.1, 2.1, 3.1, 4.1 rather than 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, as I think this would be quite a different experience - not necessarily better, but perhaps a more cohesive view of one version. However, I don't think a second read through is likely any time soon.
It's also a book that leads you through historical events, and educates you - never have I felt my lack of classical literature education so keenly - Ferguson is an avid reader and admirer of many of the classics, with such enthusiasm that several times I left book marks to come back to books he made me want to read. Sometimes I was not sure what events were real or fiction, so a bit of investigation into those improved my world history knowledge.
Not a book for a casual reader, and if you attempt it, be prepared to let the book take you at it's own pace - this is not a book you can rush, but in the right frame of mind it is thought-provoking and cleverly executed.
I'm conflicted on the rating - on the one hand I very much admire the detail and the effort required to craft not one, but essentially four different novels, and it feels such an undertaking deserves 4 stars for simply completing such a large, thoughtful and complex story. However, I wavered between 3 and 4 stars often while reading it, and particularly around the sections when Ferguson is in college, which is when a lot of other readers also felt the story lagged. I found the prose quite unusual....consistently very long sentences, some up to a page in length, and while in some cases it lent an urgency, in others it was confusing and I would have to re-read the sentence to understand the subject and intent. It wasn't so much an entertaining read, as a worthwhile one; so I didn't love it, but I'm glad I've read it.
This book will not appeal to many - it's over 800 pages, and it can be difficult to keep track of which version of Ferguson's life you are reading at times. I feel it's a book that would improve on second reading, and rather than reading it straight through again, I would like to read the 4 versions of life individually, ie 1.1, 2.1, 3.1, 4.1 rather than 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, as I think this would be quite a different experience - not necessarily better, but perhaps a more cohesive view of one version. However, I don't think a second read through is likely any time soon.
It's also a book that leads you through historical events, and educates you - never have I felt my lack of classical literature education so keenly - Ferguson is an avid reader and admirer of many of the classics, with such enthusiasm that several times I left book marks to come back to books he made me want to read. Sometimes I was not sure what events were real or fiction, so a bit of investigation into those improved my world history knowledge.
Not a book for a casual reader, and if you attempt it, be prepared to let the book take you at it's own pace - this is not a book you can rush, but in the right frame of mind it is thought-provoking and cleverly executed.