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4.02 AVERAGE
4.02 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
sad
tense
fast-paced
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The lack of quotation marks is so frustrating. I can't tell who is talking or when a different character has responded. Also, the use of a slash instead of an apostrophe is annoying. He's playing with form for form's sake when it has nothing to do with the story. I set this down back in May, and every time I look at it on my shelf, I have no desire to pick it up. Unhauling.
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is one of the most difficult books I've ever read. Not only is the subject matter very devastating but the writing style is also quite... unique? The book is very dialogue heavy but the dialogues are in the form of paragraphs with no quotation marks. So, you'd have to keep guessing who's the one talking. You get used to it after a while, though.
I find it hella impressive that this book managed to tackle a significant amount of issues in less than 300 pages - racism, drug addiction, misogyny, body dysmorphia, police brutality, you name it. And it does it without any of it feeling forced or preachy. The characters - oh my god, what do I even say? I've never seen a set of characters meeting such a tragic fate.
While I'm really glad I read it, a part of me wishes I never did.
I find it hella impressive that this book managed to tackle a significant amount of issues in less than 300 pages - racism, drug addiction, misogyny, body dysmorphia, police brutality, you name it. And it does it without any of it feeling forced or preachy. The characters - oh my god, what do I even say? I've never seen a set of characters meeting such a tragic fate.
While I'm really glad I read it, a part of me wishes I never did.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-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
challenging
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
She shivered again, involuntarily, as she sat on the couch, looking back through so many miserably unhappy yesterdays, then smiled and hugged herself tighter, not from coldness nor fear nor despair, but joy. All that was in the near and distant past. Over with. Gone. Once more her life had reason... purpose. Once more there was a direction for her to follow. A need for her energies. She and Harry were going to recapture those blues of the sky and sea and feel the warmth of desire that had been rekindled. They were going to a new renaissance.
Requiem for a Dream was hard for me to read. Selby sets up his character cast (Harry, Sara, Tyrone, and Marion) as tragic from the start, with the conclusions of their stories only too easy to guess. But as he unfolds their narratives, I kept hoping against reason that they would be saved from their fates. Some of the moments that were the most difficult for me to read were passages where something good almost happens, like when Harry begs Sara to lay off the diet pills or when Dr. Spencer intervenes on Sara's behalf. As the novel wound to a close, reflecting on those pivotal scenes broke my heart as I read Sara's last scene, her visit with Ada and Rae. Similarly, thinking of Harry's daydream of "the last pound of pure we/ll be messin with" made me ache as I saw Harry and Tyrone's pivotal trip to Florida play out in front of me, helpless as a reader to warn them of the dangers that lay ahead.
This is perhaps tangential to the novel's aims, but I am fascinated that (as far as I can tell) Hubert Selby Jr. is not Jewish and yet he wrote a Jewish mother-son duo as his main characters. New York Jews are a different breed than West Coast Jews (like me) so I'll practice humility and refrain from commenting on the accuracy of Harry and Sara's characters. But I would love to hear what others think about their portrayal in the book.
I'm also curious that in the introduction to my edition (republished in 2000, compared to the original 1978 publication date), Selby frames Requiem as a reckoning of the American dream. It could be that I am not as cynical as Selby, but I perceive this book as dealing with addiction and consumerism, not with our national ethos as a whole.
A brief content note - the novel's end features racist language, including the n-word, used violently towards marginalized characters.
And lastly, in case anyone else also went through the whole book without knowing what "requiem" means, I just looked it up. According to Merriam-Webster, requiem means:
a composition expressing one's grief over a loss.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racial slurs
The last 50 pages of this book made me squirm and shiver, and yet I could not look away. Lou Reed was right. "If you read this book, be careful..."
What a fantastic and disturbing modern classic.
What a fantastic and disturbing modern classic.
challenging
dark
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
I found this to be very laboured, the definition of telling rather than showing. It’s tragedy porn but nobody is getting off to it.