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wishmore's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
Interesting but takes a lot of work to get through. Good for if you want to reflect on the darker aspects of life but still ultimately appreciate it
simplyb's review against another edition
5.0
This is a book of interconnected short stories. A book that is the both a careful investigation into the details of individual lives while also the summation of its parts. Its a study of time and travel, but not time travel. It's novel tellings combined with creative re-imaginings. And each thematic story sinuously combines with each other to remind us that every travel through time, irrespective of era or epoch, is fraught with intrigue and danger mixed with beauty and wonder. This is not a travelogue, but it kind of is. I'm not sure I have even fully absorbed it yet, but it sticks with you.
jacob_wren's review against another edition
Lance Olsen writes:
Slowly, [Hieronymus] Bosch came to admit that he would never be famous. He would never be the talk of this town, or any other. The recognition ached like a body full of bruises. He could hardly wait to take his place before his easel every morning to find out what his imagination had waiting for him, yet he had to make peace with the bristly fact that recognition was a boat built for others. He had to content himself of the rush of daily finding – the way milled minerals mixed precisely with egg whites create astounding carmines, creams, cobalts; how the scabby pot-bellied rats scurrying through his feverscapes were not really pot-bellied rats at all, but the lies flung against the true church day after day.
Slowly, [Hieronymus] Bosch came to admit that he would never be famous. He would never be the talk of this town, or any other. The recognition ached like a body full of bruises. He could hardly wait to take his place before his easel every morning to find out what his imagination had waiting for him, yet he had to make peace with the bristly fact that recognition was a boat built for others. He had to content himself of the rush of daily finding – the way milled minerals mixed precisely with egg whites create astounding carmines, creams, cobalts; how the scabby pot-bellied rats scurrying through his feverscapes were not really pot-bellied rats at all, but the lies flung against the true church day after day.
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