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nlgn's review against another edition
5.0
Casts experiences of travelling in Albania in a whole new light. Now I understand why people were concerned when we rode off into the mountains...
Broken April is remarkable in how it captures so much in what might seem quite a constrained setting: the varieties of human relationship - romantic, family, enemy, stranger - the country and the city and the passing of old ways, the emergence of cultural self-awareness, the landscape...
The tone occasionally feel too discursive or didactic, but the material is so interesting (and, to me at least, so unknown) that it is easy to overlook this minor gripe.
Broken April is remarkable in how it captures so much in what might seem quite a constrained setting: the varieties of human relationship - romantic, family, enemy, stranger - the country and the city and the passing of old ways, the emergence of cultural self-awareness, the landscape...
The tone occasionally feel too discursive or didactic, but the material is so interesting (and, to me at least, so unknown) that it is easy to overlook this minor gripe.
zazine's review against another edition
dark
informative
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
lillyjane30's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
0.25
dimarleo's review against another edition
dark
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
3.5
eigendecomp's review against another edition
5.0
The Albanian highlands are a gloomy place where hard-nosed and hard-scrabble peasants eke out a precarious living farming corn. Even the mountain fairies in their tales seem to be hard-nosed and hard-scrabble.
What glamour there is in the peasants' lives derives from their participation in self-perpetuating blood-feuds, regulated (like everything else) by the ancient set of oral laws known as the Kanun.
What sort of person goes there on his honeymoon?
A fool, if you ask me. A somewhat romantic fool, perhaps - I will grant you that - but a fool nevertheless.
Bessian is a fashionable writer from Tirana, the capital of Albania. He has made his name by works in which he waxed lyrical about the highlands, the peasants, and the Kanun. But he has never actually been there. So he takes his young, beautiful, and impressionable wife Diana to the highlands on their honeymoon-cum-research-trip.
Predictably, nothing good comes out of it.
At a late point in the novel, Bessian somewhat casually drops the name of Marx. It is not clear whether he has actually read or understood him, but in my opinion, he would have done far better by himself to attend carefully to Nietzsche's famous dictum "If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you".
What glamour there is in the peasants' lives derives from their participation in self-perpetuating blood-feuds, regulated (like everything else) by the ancient set of oral laws known as the Kanun.
What sort of person goes there on his honeymoon?
A fool, if you ask me. A somewhat romantic fool, perhaps - I will grant you that - but a fool nevertheless.
Bessian is a fashionable writer from Tirana, the capital of Albania. He has made his name by works in which he waxed lyrical about the highlands, the peasants, and the Kanun. But he has never actually been there. So he takes his young, beautiful, and impressionable wife Diana to the highlands on their honeymoon-cum-research-trip.
Predictably, nothing good comes out of it.
At a late point in the novel, Bessian somewhat casually drops the name of Marx. It is not clear whether he has actually read or understood him, but in my opinion, he would have done far better by himself to attend carefully to Nietzsche's famous dictum "If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you".
zazreads's review against another edition
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
4.0
diesmali's review against another edition
3.0
It’s surreal that this book depicts a time and place in the world we live in. I would never have imagined...
cf1990xxx's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25