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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
'There are more beginnings than there are ends to contain them.'
Gretel searches for her mum Sarah, who abandoned her at sixteen. On the hunt and afterwards she pulls together clues to the weird events when Marcus stayed with them on their canal boat, the winter they hunted the Bonak. The more she remembers and learns, the more there is to understand.
There is so much to love about this novel. I read it a month ago and here's what still bothers me:
Language - Gretel updates dictionaries and is fascinated by words' biographies and meanings. She thinks and dreams in she and Sarah's charming private dialect, recalling more and more. The writing is lyrical, transfixing.
Setting - this is a book set in forgotten places, avoided places. Most of the action takes place on wasteland, or on muddy river banks outside small towns, in service stations hotels and sticky old restaurants. It is often cold, and damp, messy and lonely.
Character - strongly drawn eccentrics, unexpected and flawed and never wholly knowable, struggling with and against themselves.
Storytelling - a flipping clever structure, sliding between equally urgent timelines and points of view, experienced, remembered, perhaps imagined, always teasing between truth and doubt.
Atmosphere - I've seldom been so unnerved by a book, so uneasy that I also wish to remain uncertain, suspended between truth and doubt.
I'm not only bothered by this novel, I've also been inspired it and believe others interested in oddity and eeriness will be too. Read it.
Gretel searches for her mum Sarah, who abandoned her at sixteen. On the hunt and afterwards she pulls together clues to the weird events when Marcus stayed with them on their canal boat, the winter they hunted the Bonak. The more she remembers and learns, the more there is to understand.
There is so much to love about this novel. I read it a month ago and here's what still bothers me:
Language - Gretel updates dictionaries and is fascinated by words' biographies and meanings. She thinks and dreams in she and Sarah's charming private dialect, recalling more and more. The writing is lyrical, transfixing.
Setting - this is a book set in forgotten places, avoided places. Most of the action takes place on wasteland, or on muddy river banks outside small towns, in service stations hotels and sticky old restaurants. It is often cold, and damp, messy and lonely.
Character - strongly drawn eccentrics, unexpected and flawed and never wholly knowable, struggling with and against themselves.
Storytelling - a flipping clever structure, sliding between equally urgent timelines and points of view, experienced, remembered, perhaps imagined, always teasing between truth and doubt.
Atmosphere - I've seldom been so unnerved by a book, so uneasy that I also wish to remain uncertain, suspended between truth and doubt.
I'm not only bothered by this novel, I've also been inspired it and believe others interested in oddity and eeriness will be too. Read it.
Hard to get into at first. But as the plot unfolded I got into this more and more.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A captivating, dreamlike novel, that was so compelling, I couldn't put it down. I didn't read the blurb so I didn't realise it was a retelling of the Oedipus myth but I think that the story was stronger when you don't know that in advance. So, I'd recommend reading this without reading about the plot beforehand.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Incest, Suicide, Violence
Minor: Vomit
Darkly interesting; pacing reveals the events from three different points on the timeline, all converging
I enjoy this type of British novel (similar to things I've read by Ali Smith, Tessa Hadley, Meg Rosoff) and this one was well-done. Man Booker longlist is right for it. Also an extremely good cover.
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Johnson's first story collection is populated by characters and settings that owe a big deal to magic realism, but they are more than anything an excuse -Johnson's excuse- to talk about issues such as domestic violence, abuse, identity, gender.
And now she goes and publishes this wonderful monster, this beautiful reinterpretation of Sophocle's Oedipus Rex only here the clairvoyant who brings the prophecy is a transgender woman, the hunter is a young woman who works as a lexicographer as a way to find her place in language, and the kid who tries to escape his fate -only to find it later- is someone unable to express his truth, until it's too late. In Johnson's appropriation of this tale, the king has a boat and the queen is a demential being who loses and gets lost.
This is a novel that hides one too many monsters. This is a novel about finding and losing your family while losing and finding yourself. It is about how society pushes you constantly to the verge of a canal you are afraid to cross.
And now she goes and publishes this wonderful monster, this beautiful reinterpretation of Sophocle's Oedipus Rex only here the clairvoyant who brings the prophecy is a transgender woman, the hunter is a young woman who works as a lexicographer as a way to find her place in language, and the kid who tries to escape his fate -only to find it later- is someone unable to express his truth, until it's too late. In Johnson's appropriation of this tale, the king has a boat and the queen is a demential being who loses and gets lost.
This is a novel that hides one too many monsters. This is a novel about finding and losing your family while losing and finding yourself. It is about how society pushes you constantly to the verge of a canal you are afraid to cross.