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filaughn's review against another edition
2.0
I only finished this book because 1) it's short and 2)it's hard to find authors from Moldova. I wouldn't suggest reading it.
Some of my issues with it may be due to the translator, but it's hard to tell. Word choice and sentence structure were odd enough to be distracting - medicament and ingurgitate were used several times each, the author referred to "the sole of the nation's..." and so on. The author was also terrible at writing women, and his attitudes toward women were not great - in ways that went beyond anything excusable as translation error.
There weren't any other aspects of the writing that were strong enough to balance out these issues. There were a few sections toward the end where I felt like he was more skillful and drew me in a bit - especially when talking about why he chose to write about the Soviet period in Moldova, and why he structured it the way he did. Somehow that struck me as reasonably well done even though the actual book he was describing so thoughtfully did not. It may not entirely make sense, but I ended up feeling like if this book had been written by a different author with significant changes to characterization, style, and plot, and a better translator, it could have been great.
Overall I honestly raced through this in an effort to be done with it and was glad when it was over. I would suggest trying to find a different Moldovan author if possible for a read-around-the-world type challenge, and can't see any other situation where it would be worth considering reading this.
Some of my issues with it may be due to the translator, but it's hard to tell. Word choice and sentence structure were odd enough to be distracting - medicament and ingurgitate were used several times each, the author referred to "the sole of the nation's..." and so on. The author was also terrible at writing women, and his attitudes toward women were not great - in ways that went beyond anything excusable as translation error.
There weren't any other aspects of the writing that were strong enough to balance out these issues. There were a few sections toward the end where I felt like he was more skillful and drew me in a bit - especially when talking about why he chose to write about the Soviet period in Moldova, and why he structured it the way he did. Somehow that struck me as reasonably well done even though the actual book he was describing so thoughtfully did not. It may not entirely make sense, but I ended up feeling like if this book had been written by a different author with significant changes to characterization, style, and plot, and a better translator, it could have been great.
Overall I honestly raced through this in an effort to be done with it and was glad when it was over. I would suggest trying to find a different Moldovan author if possible for a read-around-the-world type challenge, and can't see any other situation where it would be worth considering reading this.
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