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maura_kathleen's review against another edition
challenging
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
One of the strangest and most provocative books I've read. I can seldom remember the title of it, and then I will catch myself googling things like "man tries to recreate accident builds entire hotel" to try to find it again. (I don't remember if that plot description is even entirely accurate.) A bewildering, haunting exploration of obsession, trauma, authenticity, and the evanescent cutpurse of temporality.
(Declining to provide star ratings for books that I last read before 2019.)
piku_baumann's review against another edition
1.0
When I clicked "I'm finished" on this one, Goodreads said: "Error!" As in: that's not possible. Goodreads is correct. It is not possible to finish this book. This tedious-tedious detail-ridden madness of a book.
I did finish, however, because the first 60-70 pages had been such good writing. It had injected a hope in me that it will get better in the end, that the end will make sense again. It didn't.
I'm sorry, Mister McCarthy, but I don't even want to understand what you were trying to do there.
I was so bored.
I did finish, however, because the first 60-70 pages had been such good writing. It had injected a hope in me that it will get better in the end, that the end will make sense again. It didn't.
I'm sorry, Mister McCarthy, but I don't even want to understand what you were trying to do there.
I was so bored.
ondrobondro's review against another edition
5.0
One of the most realistic books I've read, whilst managing to simultaneously be completely unbelievable. McCarthy has a magnificent skill with language that allows you to believe even the most absurd of concepts and situations, whilst leaving it rooted in reality to beautiful results. One of the best books I've read this year.
zimb0's review against another edition
5.0
I do not know how to review this brilliant work. Let me try to reenact its effect on me: Faster as it goes, lesch segment like the golden rstio in reverse; leveling its identity and pinpoint curve.
(A must read for fans of the surreal of J.G. Ballard and the like. An astonishing piece is this.)
(A must read for fans of the surreal of J.G. Ballard and the like. An astonishing piece is this.)
nssutton's review against another edition
3.0
i started this before i finished the schulz biography, as i was worried about having to lug two books on the train whilst [b:on the road|6288|The Road|Cormac McCarthy|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/21E8H3D1JSL._SL75_.jpg|3355573] to trying on bridesmaid dresses. i got sucked into the story immediately, despite not even having had coffee that morning. when i got to a point where i felt comfortable taking a break, i finished schulz and then switched back.
my break, sadly, coincided with a sour turn in the story and i found myself just eager to get to the end. as the situation described got more and more fucked up, i found myself increasingly uncomfortable and felt that way until the very last word.
three stars for making me feel something, even if it wasn't a feeling i enjoyed or appreciated.
my break, sadly, coincided with a sour turn in the story and i found myself just eager to get to the end. as the situation described got more and more fucked up, i found myself increasingly uncomfortable and felt that way until the very last word.
three stars for making me feel something, even if it wasn't a feeling i enjoyed or appreciated.
tasharobinson's review against another edition
3.0
Fascinating premise — a man who lost his memory in an accident, and has millions of dollars to burn after the financial settlement — becomes obsessed with first re-creating a tiny sliver of memory in vast detail over and over and over, then with re-creating events that happen to him or other people. The ending has a sense of tragedy and inevitability, as it becomes clear how far he's fallen into his obsessions, and how little connection he has to the real world. It strongly reminded me of Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, in terms of the artistic obsession with re-enactments at the expense of the rest of the world.
The problem with the book for me is that so much of it focuses in vast and eventually suffocatingly repetitive detail on those re-creations, and the detail put into them, and the way the protagonist moves back and forth through them, trying to capture this one tiny feeling of satisfaction. In that sense, the book is more like House Of Leaves when it devolves into mind-bogglingly long lists of architectural details. Such a high percentage of the book is spent on the exact kind of roof tile the protagonist wants to re-create a building, or exactly where everyone needs to stand and what they need to look like, or just the process of him mechanically making everyone do the same things over and over and over while he looks for the vague tingling feeling that means they got it right. I suspect that stripped of repetitive and obsessive detail, this could have been a mesmerizing novella or even a short story. Instead, it feels padded, and so obsessively circular and redundant that I sometimes felt the author was trying to lull me into a state as mentally deranged as the protagonist's, where all this endlessly duplicated trivia actually meant something.
The problem with the book for me is that so much of it focuses in vast and eventually suffocatingly repetitive detail on those re-creations, and the detail put into them, and the way the protagonist moves back and forth through them, trying to capture this one tiny feeling of satisfaction. In that sense, the book is more like House Of Leaves when it devolves into mind-bogglingly long lists of architectural details. Such a high percentage of the book is spent on the exact kind of roof tile the protagonist wants to re-create a building, or exactly where everyone needs to stand and what they need to look like, or just the process of him mechanically making everyone do the same things over and over and over while he looks for the vague tingling feeling that means they got it right. I suspect that stripped of repetitive and obsessive detail, this could have been a mesmerizing novella or even a short story. Instead, it feels padded, and so obsessively circular and redundant that I sometimes felt the author was trying to lull me into a state as mentally deranged as the protagonist's, where all this endlessly duplicated trivia actually meant something.
micksland's review against another edition
3.0
Like Cormac McCarthy's The Road, it presents a bleak and hopeless picture of existential horror. Unlike The Road, it doesn't leave any room for hope. Not even a smidgen.
Also, it was almost intolerably weird. Characters were introduced and then abandoned. Plot points were stressed and then left to rot until later in the book, where they were mentioned once and then forgotten again. None of the characters except the narrator actually matter. This sounds like a terrible story, right? In some ways, it is. But in other ways, you feel like the author is trying to tell you something through the medium of this weirdness.
Toward the end of the novel, I thought I almost understood, but the book ended and I was still grasping for straws, trying to figure out what the author was trying to tell us. Maybe that's the point. Maybe he wasn't trying to say anything at all. Maybe this book's infuriating existentialism has finally gotten to me. This book wasn't actually enjoyable to read, but it's going to bother me for a while. Ah, well, at least I'll remember it...
Also, it was almost intolerably weird. Characters were introduced and then abandoned. Plot points were stressed and then left to rot until later in the book, where they were mentioned once and then forgotten again. None of the characters except the narrator actually matter. This sounds like a terrible story, right? In some ways, it is. But in other ways, you feel like the author is trying to tell you something through the medium of this weirdness.
Toward the end of the novel, I thought I almost understood, but the book ended and I was still grasping for straws, trying to figure out what the author was trying to tell us. Maybe that's the point. Maybe he wasn't trying to say anything at all. Maybe this book's infuriating existentialism has finally gotten to me. This book wasn't actually enjoyable to read, but it's going to bother me for a while. Ah, well, at least I'll remember it...
themorsecode's review against another edition
3.0
Some interesting ideas surrounding authenticity and memory but the book didn't seem to work as a whole for me, especially towards the end.