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3.33 AVERAGE
3.33 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Suicide
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
tense
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
This is a very strange book, which is one of the reasons why I picked it up. There are so many threads and themes being discussed in The Visitors: mental illness, late stage capitalism, Occupy Wall Street, textile art, weaving, poverty, queer longing, garden gnomes, societal collapse--and they all fit neatly together and work. And even while you're reading it, wondering how on earth all of these disparate ideas and threads are going to fit into each other and relate, and even at the end when the pieces of the puzzle end of working and fitting together, you still don't feel satisfied, because there are no good solutions, what you hope for doesn't happen, what you think will happen doesn't happen either (almost a mirror of our own current societal collapse), and no one really gets there comeuppance, there isn't a neat and tidy bow, and you also don't hate or blame anyone else (except maybe The Professor: he kind of sucks).
It's a strange novel about desperation and longing and confusion and textile weaving and a very well-dressed garden gnome hallucination. And you really do just have to read it.
It's a strange novel about desperation and longing and confusion and textile weaving and a very well-dressed garden gnome hallucination. And you really do just have to read it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Domestic abuse, Mental illness, Medical trauma, Death of parent
Moderate: Gore, Suicide, Grief
Minor: Gun violence, Fire/Fire injury
This book really tickled me for it's openness to being all kinds of books at once. I really didn't know what to expect from scene to scene, but that didn't make me feel like the novelist was out of control, just that this book was more organic than that.
Our protag is a fiber artist around 2008-9, recently divorced from a man and a gnome has taken up residence in her small NYC apartment. Though we sort of know from early on the gnome is a projection of some sort. The artist is at loose ends, running a crafts store into the ground and generally on a slow decline, with Occupy mostly far in the background, though she does go to Zucotti park for some teach-ins. The novel is smart about economics, as it is about cyber (there's a made-up hacker collective, GoodNite, and a Ukranian super computer, and other semi-specialized knowledge delivered here in tight little packets of exposition), but it doesn't really intersect the ideas of the book, which are, it seems, about the challenge of discovering yourself as an artist in the city. Or something like that.... It's a lot of fun, even with its sort of gruesome ending.
It did occasionally feel dated; it reads like a novel that took a long time to finish/ get published, but what do I know. It also deploys a lot of learning without a real obvious purpose. But I was into it.
Our protag is a fiber artist around 2008-9, recently divorced from a man and a gnome has taken up residence in her small NYC apartment. Though we sort of know from early on the gnome is a projection of some sort. The artist is at loose ends, running a crafts store into the ground and generally on a slow decline, with Occupy mostly far in the background, though she does go to Zucotti park for some teach-ins. The novel is smart about economics, as it is about cyber (there's a made-up hacker collective, GoodNite, and a Ukranian super computer, and other semi-specialized knowledge delivered here in tight little packets of exposition), but it doesn't really intersect the ideas of the book, which are, it seems, about the challenge of discovering yourself as an artist in the city. Or something like that.... It's a lot of fun, even with its sort of gruesome ending.
It did occasionally feel dated; it reads like a novel that took a long time to finish/ get published, but what do I know. It also deploys a lot of learning without a real obvious purpose. But I was into it.
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
funny
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Jessi Jezewska Stevens is a talented writer. However, to quote Thanos, her politics bore me. And since her politics permeate the book, the book is boring. I tried, I really did, I got half way through and since I am an obsessive and can’t not finish a book I started, I decided to skim the rest.
I was shocked and angered by how she ended the book. Sure, I found C so emotionally infantile and I couldn’t really care about her. But we what the author did to her was just cruel. Your characters are your children, how can you treat them so badly?
As an aside, I lived on Wall Street during Occupy. Landlords were desperate, and we got a great apartment for a steal. Occupy was an absolute joke. Maybe 150 people tops in the tent park. Some rallies had 20 people. Having witnessed tens of thousands at the 2011 protests in Spain, the arrogance and American exceptionalism that made this pathetic protest seem innovative or earth shattering, always annoyed me. The slogan about the 1% was to hide the fact that the protestors were part of the top 10-20% and had no clue what real poverty means. Neither does C and neither does the author, who tries to romanticize a political milieu which meant nothing and accomplished nothing.
I was shocked and angered by how she ended the book. Sure, I found C so emotionally infantile and I couldn’t really care about her. But we what the author did to her was just cruel. Your characters are your children, how can you treat them so badly?
As an aside, I lived on Wall Street during Occupy. Landlords were desperate, and we got a great apartment for a steal. Occupy was an absolute joke. Maybe 150 people tops in the tent park. Some rallies had 20 people. Having witnessed tens of thousands at the 2011 protests in Spain, the arrogance and American exceptionalism that made this pathetic protest seem innovative or earth shattering, always annoyed me. The slogan about the 1% was to hide the fact that the protestors were part of the top 10-20% and had no clue what real poverty means. Neither does C and neither does the author, who tries to romanticize a political milieu which meant nothing and accomplished nothing.