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catcherinthepi's review
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
Tough book to rate. I thought the concept was somewhat clever -- basically, an exploration of how providing back story on characters can be read in any order, although the order will probably influence how you view the characters and the story. The pun in the title is cute, I guess, though I thought the conceit of the buildings themselves telling their stories wasn't strong enough. However, I did enjoy how this book of literal epic proportions did ultimately, in gory detail, explore the lives of "everyday people", elevating their struggles, dreams, and emotions to a higher stage.
The physical object of this "book" is large and imposing and tbh awkward to interact with. I have mixed feelings about that. Really hated how small the text was on everything.
I think our main, nameless character had a lot of interesting development. However, she was...nameless. Some people could read that as her standing in for "every woman" (cue Chaka Khan!), but combining that with other aspects of the work, I found it misogynistic. Basically every woman in this story is miserable. It felt like "women have it harder" was hammered way too hard in this book. The women are depressed and alone, commit suicide, or wind up in unhappy marriages and hating their bodies. There's also this very strong association with fatness and unhappiness, which is gross.
For a book that supposedly takes place primarily in an urban environment, it was sorely lacking in diversity. The bee side stories were really fucking weird and too "Leave it to Beaver" for my taste.
The physical object of this "book" is large and imposing and tbh awkward to interact with. I have mixed feelings about that. Really hated how small the text was on everything.
I think our main, nameless character had a lot of interesting development. However, she was...nameless. Some people could read that as her standing in for "every woman" (cue Chaka Khan!), but combining that with other aspects of the work, I found it misogynistic. Basically every woman in this story is miserable. It felt like "women have it harder" was hammered way too hard in this book. The women are depressed and alone, commit suicide, or wind up in unhappy marriages and hating their bodies. There's also this very strong association with fatness and unhappiness, which is gross.
For a book that supposedly takes place primarily in an urban environment, it was sorely lacking in diversity. The bee side stories were really fucking weird and too "Leave it to Beaver" for my taste.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Fatphobia
Moderate: Suicide
steveatwaywords's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
Ware's work - outside of its expensive ingenuity - is both a delightful experience and an unsettling reverie of the process of narrative from an American middle class. Anxious, self-justifying, obsessive, near-sighted, narcissistic, and wounded, its characters live forever in a state of "wants." Some of these needs are absolutely vital in compassion, simplicity, and love. Others are idiosyncratic manufactures of the culture we have built around ourselves; and it is these last which always threaten to overwhelm, to submerge us in despair, to drive us apart. All of them, regardless, ring true for the narratives of expectation which have been built for us, and that we ourselves build.
A reader approaching this self-assembled plot should obviously not expect (necessarily) a set of traditional story arcs. Instead, what emerges are patterns and intersections of story across generations--in some key moments, where parallel choices led to greater moments of wonder or years of despair. Enter and exit where we wish, each part of this mosaic emerges as it will.
That the story is "reader-built," then, is more structurally a clever authorial strategy than one of real satisfaction of experience, where a new meaning emerges depending upon the approach. Once the building and its character have emptied their secrets, one does not enter again as the same reader. So while I truly enjoyed the experience of reading these fragments (some in incomparably tiny type, however!), I wonder if the pay-off was worth the price of manufacture.
A reader approaching this self-assembled plot should obviously not expect (necessarily) a set of traditional story arcs. Instead, what emerges are patterns and intersections of story across generations--in some key moments, where parallel choices led to greater moments of wonder or years of despair. Enter and exit where we wish, each part of this mosaic emerges as it will.
That the story is "reader-built," then, is more structurally a clever authorial strategy than one of real satisfaction of experience, where a new meaning emerges depending upon the approach. Once the building and its character have emptied their secrets, one does not enter again as the same reader. So while I truly enjoyed the experience of reading these fragments (some in incomparably tiny type, however!), I wonder if the pay-off was worth the price of manufacture.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicide, Sexual content, and Death
maxandrambo's review
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicide, Ableism, Death of parent, Animal death, Suicidal thoughts, Mental illness, Homophobia, Racism, Abortion, and Fatphobia
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