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lawbooks600's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Representation: Black main character, side Asian character
Score: Six points out of ten.
I wanted to read this for a while now and after I saw one of the two libraries I regularly go to place this on the display shelf I picked this up and finally read it. When I finished it this book didn't make me feel impressed by any means since it was incredibly similar to another novel (I'll get to that later, oh and by the way when I read the praise, it misled me.) The story starts with the main character Frank Jasper or Frank for short and already there are two attributes I'd like to point out, an author wrote a book about an author who wrote a book (Hah! Meta!) and this is supposed to satire which means it should be funny. It isn't; I didn't laugh throughout the entire book and I even found it vulgar sometimes. Shame. Frank tells me about his debut novel which only sold 50 copies implying it wasn't that successful so then he is invited to a writers' program in Boston but what I thought the author could've improved on is the pacing, it's incredibly slow and didn't help me enjoy this book since it rambles and after the main events it has no idea where it's supposed to go so it fizzles out with less of a bang and more of a whimper. Frank experiences what it's like to be in a program like this and I hoped that he would become a better writer through that but no! He only takes the opportunity to ramble even more only for him to get kicked out of the program. Counterintuitively, getting kicked out helped Frank as after some long-winded monologues filled with buzzwords which I forgot he describes his stay in America and he had plans to write a memoir which ends the book like that.
P.S. It's a lot like Yellowface.
P.P.S. In fact, Yellowface and Seesaw have a lot of similarities with each other:
Both talk about races.
Both are satires.
Both are meta.
Both are about writing.
Both main characters are obscure writers.
Now given the fact that I've heard about Yellowface through comprehensive means, I get why I had this sentiment. Still, they're so similar, much like one another and I unfortunately saw some of the latter's concepts that are strikingly analogous to the former's.
Score: Six points out of ten.
I wanted to read this for a while now and after I saw one of the two libraries I regularly go to place this on the display shelf I picked this up and finally read it. When I finished it this book didn't make me feel impressed by any means since it was incredibly similar to another novel (I'll get to that later, oh and by the way when I read the praise, it misled me.) The story starts with the main character Frank Jasper or Frank for short and already there are two attributes I'd like to point out, an author wrote a book about an author who wrote a book (Hah! Meta!) and this is supposed to satire which means it should be funny. It isn't; I didn't laugh throughout the entire book and I even found it vulgar sometimes. Shame. Frank tells me about his debut novel which only sold 50 copies implying it wasn't that successful so then he is invited to a writers' program in Boston but what I thought the author could've improved on is the pacing, it's incredibly slow and didn't help me enjoy this book since it rambles and after the main events it has no idea where it's supposed to go so it fizzles out with less of a bang and more of a whimper. Frank experiences what it's like to be in a program like this and I hoped that he would become a better writer through that but no! He only takes the opportunity to ramble even more only for him to get kicked out of the program. Counterintuitively, getting kicked out helped Frank as after some long-winded monologues filled with buzzwords which I forgot he describes his stay in America and he had plans to write a memoir which ends the book like that.
P.S. It's a lot like Yellowface.
P.P.S. In fact, Yellowface and Seesaw have a lot of similarities with each other:
Both talk about races.
Both are satires.
Both are meta.
Both are about writing.
Both main characters are obscure writers.
Now given the fact that I've heard about Yellowface through comprehensive means, I get why I had this sentiment. Still, they're so similar, much like one another and I unfortunately saw some of the latter's concepts that are strikingly analogous to the former's.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexism
Minor: Slavery, Child abuse, and Sexual assault
Full trigger warnings: Sexist slur, assault, slavery and an abusive family mentionedtomaxhull's review
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
"And somewhere in my spontaneous lecture, I feared there was something truly wrong with me, an irreparable flaw, a gap in my thinking and being; I feared they all had access to some pure and morally correct knowledge that I did not."
A book I liked more and more the further into it I got, always a pleasant surprise. Ogene's Frank Jasper is an excellent protagonist who's sometimes hard to stick with, but worth the journey - characterised by inaction, often making such notable toe-curling blunders that I'd have to close the book and close my eyes, and wonderfully human.
It takes a while to get where it's going, and the pace is somewhat slow at the start, although you're settled into it as a reader by the end. Described on its back cover as a satire of academia and what it is to 'represent' a culture, which I didn't find entirely accurate. While Seesaw does achieve its satirical aims with aplomb, I found it much more interesting when the story drifted further from this fish-out-of-water world and more into Frank's aimless journey across America after he fails out of his fellowship - a journey filled with little lies and human mundanity, written with effortless poetry.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism and Sexual assault
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