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3.56 AVERAGE
3.56 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
emotional
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
emotional
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
sad
medium-paced
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
This is a collection of interlinked short stories based on the idea of turbulence. Whether on a flight, emotionally or health wise, all the characters in these 12 shorts are dealing with some form of disruption to their lives. It reads as if you are walking along a street gazing into the windows of various homes. Each story is short, so you only get brief glimpses into each character's life. This can make the text feel quite shallow but, overall, it works.
David Szalay had an idea: a series of vignettes about a diverse series of characters loosely connected by their flights around the world. It’s not an especially interesting idea, probably one that should have simply been discarded. One might call it a gimmick. Well, Davis Szalay pursued his uninteresting idea with all the confidence and mediocrity of a dude with recent literary acclaim filling his sails. I don’t know about his previous work, but this is trite garbage. David Szalay sketches a cast of characters—60-something woman from Hong Kong, Alice Munro figure from Toronto, an exec from Senegal, an Indian doctor living in Hong Kong—all in the midst of existential crises and revelations, in tableaux entirely devoid of insight or development.
I’m unsure where the lines are when it comes to writing characters whose identities and life experiences differ greatly from our own, but it’s pretty easy to recognize when it’s being done poorly. It’s fine to write badly. Lots of people write badly. But when you start to write badly into other people’s identities and cultures, it’s it’s hard not to write yourself into offensive territory. I remember vividly how Column McCann waded into similarly cringy waters in Let the Great World Spin. If there’s anything working for Szalay’s novel it’s that these characters are so sketchy and underdeveloped that he never reaches truly offensive territory. Still, there’s no escaping the impression this is a white dude dressing up his whitedude reactions and decision-making in different costumes, throwing around the superficial adornments of different cultures. “Ah, this character is in Delhi, so he doesn’t prepare a lunch, he prepares a tiffin.” This is about as deep as Szalay gets into the culture and headspace of his characters. His writerly gaze always rests on details that would be salient to an outsider in these global spaces, not the things that would be salient to the characters themselves who had grown up in them. As Szalay attempts to, say, depict the intimate conversation between two sisters from Kerala affected by domestic violence, I was left with the overwhelming sense of a writer with the gall but not the understanding or experience to write about these people and things. This isn’t a single example; it’s the whole book.
Unsurprisingly, given what else we know about this book, Szalay has an unsubtle message to communicate to us, which is basically that everyone, when they act selfishly, have an outburst, seem aloof, has their own competing worries and needs, a world we may not see. To illustrate this point, Szalay struggles to come up with examples other than relatives having health scares somewhere else in the world. For a novel (if this is a novel) so interested in this concept, we get shockingly little interiority from these characters.
If you think Crash (2006) was great cinema, then Turbulence might be the book you’re looking for.
3.5 I just wish it had been longer. A lot like If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, where some stories are better than others and you want to know more about the characters.
Kilka opowiadań, które są połączone. Bohater drugoplanowy w pierwszym opowiadaniu, jest bohaterem głównym kolejnego.
Ma się ochotę powiedzieć: "Gdzieś to już było", bo tak właśnie jest napisana i skonstruowana książka Szalaya.
Nic nowego. Nic smutnego ani wesołego. Ot zwykłe smętne czytadło.
Ma się ochotę powiedzieć: "Gdzieś to już było", bo tak właśnie jest napisana i skonstruowana książka Szalaya.
Nic nowego. Nic smutnego ani wesołego. Ot zwykłe smętne czytadło.
Turbulence is a collection of short stories, each connected through flights and characters. As one short story ends, another begins centered around a flight and a character from the previous story. I found I really enjoyed this style, and the way the stories were small snapshots into a moment in the character’s life. The themes were just connected enough to make this a cohesive collection of stories, while still highlighting individual characters. I received an ARC of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Well,I read a book in a day. I can't say that my life was any changed by reading it. It was very just okay. Contemporary/literary fiction is not usually my genre. Occasionally I try one and remember why.
This book was 12 interconnected short stories, each section broken up by someone travelling from one airport to another. Each new story featured someone introduced in the previous story, most of whom had just a short interaction with the previous story's main character.
This is a neat idea, bu unfortunately, the stories simply didn't interest me. Contemporary stories almost never do. I live in the real world, why would I want to read about it? None of the stories were memorable, and a week or so after finishing, I couldn't tell you want any of them were about.
I do understand I am not the intended audience. This book was chosen to satisfy a reading challenge.
This book was 12 interconnected short stories, each section broken up by someone travelling from one airport to another. Each new story featured someone introduced in the previous story, most of whom had just a short interaction with the previous story's main character.
This is a neat idea, bu unfortunately, the stories simply didn't interest me. Contemporary stories almost never do. I live in the real world, why would I want to read about it? None of the stories were memorable, and a week or so after finishing, I couldn't tell you want any of them were about.
I do understand I am not the intended audience. This book was chosen to satisfy a reading challenge.