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3.45 AVERAGE
3.45 AVERAGE
first book from forbes library! new library card! life is good! i already ranted to maggie about this one, thinking that she said she "disliked" the book when in fact i had just misheard her through the phone and was also projecting my thoughts onto her oops.
this is my first foray into contemporary literary fiction in awhile, which is making me face up to my current reading struggle - having cultivated an experimental literary snobbery that now makes it hard for me to read books that are even slightly inflected with the disaffected/distant/mfa writing voice. like i annoyingly can't enjoy them bc of the writing. especially when each chapter ends with some freighted objective correllative description that is construted so heavy with meaning, guiding the reader to a reflective and "complex" conclusion. ok now i'm just being harsh because sometimes i worry i do this in my own writing lol. and anyway i created this problem for myself by gorging on too much nonsensically intelligent new narrative writing. but anyway i forced myself to enjoy this for the plot and i was quite sucked in....although i do wish it was a bit more twisty-turny.
the reason i was drawn to this book in the first place was its subject - it's from the pov of a cointelpro-vibes activism infiltrator who goes to france to check out an agricultural commune and tear it apart from the inside. it was really interesting to read an outsider perspective on this esp because my entire semester abroad was essentially visiting agricultural communes, while being instructed by a dude who is similar to bruno lacombe lol. reading this made me realize i am CRAVING books that are willing to get deeply entangled inside of questions around theories of change/collectivity/organizing, and to depict people who are in struggle. and so maybe i need to get into writing into that niche too. it's clear that rachel kushner did her research on some fronts and does accurately depict/language some of the major struggles and questions of direct action/ecodefense but it still didn't feel as deep as it could've been. it was also hard to read sometimes for the ways that the flaws of this movement were picked at by the jaded narrator like each little jab made me get all defensive and annoyed even tho that was the point. i do think that some of the described flaws felt a bit cliched/overblown but that's probably just my defensiveness speaking. and i did like that the american guy didn't end up shooting the minister at the end. at the end of the day i think maybe it's just more interesting to me personally to explore these questions from perspectives that are engaged in struggle, not disaffected outsiders trying to tear it down.
OH the main thing that felt untrue to me was bruno lacombe's stance on nonviolence like i feel like he definitely would've had a more nuanced take if he was so involved with this direct action group - like that's a big q that i wish was explored more.
this book feels similar to birnam wood in some ways, interesting to see ecodefense/"climate activism" becoming a subset of the ecofiction genre and i will be excited to see how this trend develops esp if written by writers who r not organizers.
tldr this is not good enough to go in my visionary fiction shelf but it was fun
this is my first foray into contemporary literary fiction in awhile, which is making me face up to my current reading struggle - having cultivated an experimental literary snobbery that now makes it hard for me to read books that are even slightly inflected with the disaffected/distant/mfa writing voice. like i annoyingly can't enjoy them bc of the writing. especially when each chapter ends with some freighted objective correllative description that is construted so heavy with meaning, guiding the reader to a reflective and "complex" conclusion. ok now i'm just being harsh because sometimes i worry i do this in my own writing lol. and anyway i created this problem for myself by gorging on too much nonsensically intelligent new narrative writing. but anyway i forced myself to enjoy this for the plot and i was quite sucked in....although i do wish it was a bit more twisty-turny.
the reason i was drawn to this book in the first place was its subject - it's from the pov of a cointelpro-vibes activism infiltrator who goes to france to check out an agricultural commune and tear it apart from the inside. it was really interesting to read an outsider perspective on this esp because my entire semester abroad was essentially visiting agricultural communes, while being instructed by a dude who is similar to bruno lacombe lol. reading this made me realize i am CRAVING books that are willing to get deeply entangled inside of questions around theories of change/collectivity/organizing, and to depict people who are in struggle. and so maybe i need to get into writing into that niche too. it's clear that rachel kushner did her research on some fronts and does accurately depict/language some of the major struggles and questions of direct action/ecodefense but it still didn't feel as deep as it could've been. it was also hard to read sometimes for the ways that the flaws of this movement were picked at by the jaded narrator like each little jab made me get all defensive and annoyed even tho that was the point. i do think that some of the described flaws felt a bit cliched/overblown but that's probably just my defensiveness speaking. and i did like that the american guy didn't end up shooting the minister at the end. at the end of the day i think maybe it's just more interesting to me personally to explore these questions from perspectives that are engaged in struggle, not disaffected outsiders trying to tear it down.
OH the main thing that felt untrue to me was bruno lacombe's stance on nonviolence like i feel like he definitely would've had a more nuanced take if he was so involved with this direct action group - like that's a big q that i wish was explored more.
this book feels similar to birnam wood in some ways, interesting to see ecodefense/"climate activism" becoming a subset of the ecofiction genre and i will be excited to see how this trend develops esp if written by writers who r not organizers.
tldr this is not good enough to go in my visionary fiction shelf but it was fun
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
What a giant disappointment this book was. I’ve loved everything I’d read by Rachel Kushner (except for her essays, which were just ok), so I’m a little bewildered by just how terrible this book is. The plot felt so tortured, and boring. There were some interesting ideas presented here, but not in any way that illuminated the point of the book—it was done in such a ham-handed way for the most part. Like either she was too lazy to sketch out characters to fully present some of these ideas or she doesn’t trust her readers enough so she just tells and not shows with plot and character. I made myself finish it because I thought surely there must be a payoff, but no. Nothing about this book worked.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
absolutely fascinating. good to know that leftist french men will always be misogynists
adventurous
challenging
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It was an interesting premise but I found it boring. A lot of long ranting about early humans.
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Maybe it was the intellectual writing style, but the story didn't really interested me even though the topic does