Reviews with content warning for Animal cruelty - Lanny

This is the first book in a while I've had to stop at the end, sit in silence and really digest.

I am in love with the way Max Porter wrote this. The words literally jumped around the page to reflect Dead Papa Toothwort's inner thoughts and listenings. You may know him as The Green Man.

This book was disgusting, bizarre, wonderful, magical, insane and I loved every second. It centres around a young boy called Lanny who is fantastic and weird, his life full of the whimsy he invents through art, nature and curiosity.

I won't say much more, it's a hard one to explain without giving too much away, but I absolutely loved it.

Content Warnings

savvylit's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

Lanny is a beautiful book that's equal parts dark folktale and character study. Lanny and the adults in his life all figure heavily in this novel. Lanny's mother and his art mentor, Pete, nurture and encourage Lanny's unique creativity. Lanny's father loves him but doesn't know how to nurture his son. Dead Papa Toothwort, a mythological character that is the mischievous soul of the village, recognizes Lanny's quiet brilliance. The village, as heard by Toothwort, is also a character in itself vis a vis overheard snippets of gossip. These snippets are interwoven throughout the novel until it becomes clear that they represent the ways that outsiders can taint beauty with their presumptions.

Overall, this book is difficult to describe beyond just a list of words/vibes so that's how I'll leave it.

Lanny is
enchanting
empathetic
heartbreaking
triumphant
& artful.

Content Warnings

michael_richter's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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koplomps's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

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louisegraveyard's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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miles's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Lanny is my current favourite book and has fuelled the writing of my portfolio dissertation, and yet I still don't know how to properly describe it. Certainly not without giving the plot away. I shall try anyway.
Lanny is a wonderful, mesmerising, folktale-y story about an enchanting and curious child. Lanny seems not quite like a human child, even to his parents and Dead Papa Toothwort - a sort of tree god, if you will, who has been in the small English village the story takes place in since the very beginning - has taken a liking to this strange, wonderful child. Why would DPT see Lanny as his favourite if there wasn't something truly otherworldly about him? Everything we learn about Lanny just screams 'changeling' to me and I love it. Anyway, I digress. I love this book too much.

The writing is absolutely brilliant, Porter captures me like no one else has in a very long time. Reading and re-reading Lanny fills me with a sort of creative juice that I haven't felt in a long time. It makes me feel alive. It makes me feel like I can take on the world. I don't know what it is, I can't explain it but my god do I love Max Porter's writing and stories and ideas. I love books that play around with fonts and boldness and font size and other funky formatting stuff that makes a text almost three-dimensional and that much more real. I struggle a lot with being able to visualise character actions and appearances in stories, but Porter's writing speaks to me on a bone-deep level. I know all of this sounds weird and over-the-top but it's all I have to describe it. It's a feeling that I can't put into words very well. There's obviously still a lot of stuff in Lanny that I'm not able to fully follow visually because it's so weird and fucked-up (in the best way), but it doesn't make me feel unimaginative or confused like other novels do and for that I fucking love it.

TL;DR I went a bit off-topic and just raved about Max Porter, but anyway Lanny is a masterpiece and you definitely NEED TO READ IT RIGHT NOW and then recommend it to everyone you see.

Content Warnings

mapscitiesandsongs's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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