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tregina's review against another edition
4.0
It's official: I love Leena Krohn. Tainaron is still my favourite (of what I've been able to read), but this has the same kind of gently and unsettlingly weird nuances that make her writing so compelling to me.
nokisuu's review against another edition
4.0
I really like Leena Krohn's style of blurring the lines of reality. You really don't know what's actually there, do you?
szike_01's review against another edition
3.0
I would like to put this up front: ultimately, I recommend that if a description of this book intrigues you, give it a shot. I was let down, but I think the book is better than it's worst parts.
Also: this review has very mild spoilers, so avoid reading the rest if that affects you.
To me, *Datura* is a book of unfulfilled promise. In its first chapter, it seemed to reach into my thoughts and mimic a recurrence I had been fixated on, mirroring the penultimate chapter of the book.
There were a few more such moments, separated by many chapters of mundanity that could be summed up with "you won't believe what happened to me the other day". This I think is the focus of the book, the surreal banality of life. The final chapters helped me better appreciate this, but it does not elevate the experience of slogging through meandering vignettes.
The vignettes, too, are an unfulfilled promise, the first chapter warning you that the novel will be nonlinear, to paraphrase. This non-linearity, however, is hardly noticeable, except for the occasional mention of a singing fish, and the other odd scene.
It lacks the context to be meaningfully nonlinear, as the chapters could easily be completely unrelated from one another, and the reality altering effects of the Datura plant often feel like a sidenote, background noise to a story about a piece of bread cheese that vaguely looks like Jesus.
Also: this review has very mild spoilers, so avoid reading the rest if that affects you.
To me, *Datura* is a book of unfulfilled promise. In its first chapter, it seemed to reach into my thoughts and mimic a recurrence I had been fixated on, mirroring the penultimate chapter of the book.
There were a few more such moments, separated by many chapters of mundanity that could be summed up with "you won't believe what happened to me the other day". This I think is the focus of the book, the surreal banality of life. The final chapters helped me better appreciate this, but it does not elevate the experience of slogging through meandering vignettes.
The vignettes, too, are an unfulfilled promise, the first chapter warning you that the novel will be nonlinear, to paraphrase. This non-linearity, however, is hardly noticeable, except for the occasional mention of a singing fish, and the other odd scene.
It lacks the context to be meaningfully nonlinear, as the chapters could easily be completely unrelated from one another, and the reality altering effects of the Datura plant often feel like a sidenote, background noise to a story about a piece of bread cheese that vaguely looks like Jesus.
funeraryarts's review against another edition
4.0
Dreamlike and with a prose that flows smooth and beautiful until Krohn decides to make abstractions and soul searching of Borges' level but without the constant barrage of obscure and esoteric references. She weaves a fascinating landscape full of excentric characters which work as mouthpieces for her to wax poetic on trippy subjects like reality, time, meaning, coincidences, etc. The chapters are short and digestible but never fail to hit you with something very eerie or meaninful whenever they end and overall work to fit together in a cryptic but interesting way. Krohn works in that space between fabulists, magical realists and weird fiction writers and does it so well that she secures a place in conversation from me whenever names like Calvino, Pavic, Tokarczuk or Borges are mentioned.
moonlit_shelves's review
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.5
neko_cam's review against another edition
4.0
A strange little exploration of the space between reality and illusion. The narrative follows a journalist for a fringe magazine, presenting a series of fantastical vignettes that explore one self delusion after another while the protagonist herself losses her grip on shared reality.
"My memory, the anchor that bound me to shared perceptions, had come loose. I was adrift."
"My memory, the anchor that bound me to shared perceptions, had come loose. I was adrift."
rubel's review against another edition
4.0
What a delightful slow burn of a novel. It's brief (~200 pages) and told in blinks of connected stories (~2-3 pages each). It's a quiet story of slipping outside consensus reality, with each story chipping away at our narrator's mental state. The cover name-checks Kafka (maybe I should read more Kafka), but I noticed more [b:The Third Policeman|27208|The Third Policeman|Flann O'Brien|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1343027425s/27208.jpg|3359269]'s bizarre yet satisfying alternate-world rules, [b:Little, Big|90619|Little, Big|John Crowley|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1435452849s/90619.jpg|518635]'s encouraging smile, a lower-key deprogramming ala [a:Grant Morrison|12732|Grant Morrison|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1311378308p2/12732.jpg]'s The Invisibles, or even the quiet [a:Gene Wolfe|23069|Gene Wolfe|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1207670073p2/23069.jpg] narrator who accrues a web of clues which point...somewhere?
In a calm and simple manner, it suggests that we all hoodwink each other into the "delusion we all share" from the book's subtitle. It invites us to let go of our stranglehold on who we think we are, to take a chance and step outside the cage of our performative proscribed identities. And all this without coming across pretentious or preachy. It's not the pink collage grenade of The Invisibles--it's closer to the all-pervading "rotting honey" smell from [a:Jeff VanderMeer|33919|Jeff VanderMeer|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1400594878p2/33919.jpg]'s Southern Reach.
An easy read with disturbing implications.
In a calm and simple manner, it suggests that we all hoodwink each other into the "delusion we all share" from the book's subtitle. It invites us to let go of our stranglehold on who we think we are, to take a chance and step outside the cage of our performative proscribed identities. And all this without coming across pretentious or preachy. It's not the pink collage grenade of The Invisibles--it's closer to the all-pervading "rotting honey" smell from [a:Jeff VanderMeer|33919|Jeff VanderMeer|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1400594878p2/33919.jpg]'s Southern Reach.
An easy read with disturbing implications.
tiggum's review
2.0
The story is pretty straight-forward - a woman begins taking a "natural remedy" for asthma that is actually a poison. She gets sick - and uninteresting, but while that's happening the protagonist is working for a magazine about the supernatural, aliens, conspiracies, etc. and the weird people she meets as part of that job are interesting enough to hold your attention.
amyotheramy's review
3.0
This is what I think I've learned: reality is nothing more than a working hypothesis. It is an agreement that we don't realize we've made. It's a delusion we all see. Yet it's a shared, necessary illusion, the end product of our intelligence, imagination, and senses, the basis of our health and ability to function, our truth.
Hold on to it. It's all--or nearly all--that you have. Try to set outside of it and your life will change irreversibly, assuming you survive at all.
...
The truth is always shared. A reality that belongs to only one person isn't real.
I think my poor reaction to this one is largely due to poor advertising. The author won the World Fantasy award for [b:Tainaron: Mail from Another City|1428609|Tainaron Mail from Another City|Leena Krohn|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1183510480s/1428609.jpg|1419102], and people who write about oversized insects are automatically compared to Kafka, so her books are being sold as fantasy or New Weird or surreal. This book is not any of those things, which is what I actually wanted. Also, the story has next to nothing to do with the Voynich Manuscript, even though the publisher's blurb implies it plays an important part in the tale (which I also wanted).
What this book actually is is a very lovely drawing of a mind unraveling as the narrator succumbs to datura poisoning, and also a very nice ramble through epistemology, told through the narrator's notes from the time, which she gives to an unnamed 'you'. (Authors do this to pull the reader in, to make them a character in the story, but I rarely find it effective. I always spend all my time trying to figure out who the 'you' is supposed to be in relation to the narrator. In this case, 'a close friend' is all the more detail we get.And of course given the narrator's state, a close friend who may or may not be a figment of her imagination. )
Krohn is a wonderful writer. I very much enjoy her prose and her philosophical vignettes, and as with Tainaron, I found myself wondering if the original Finnish does not somehow convey more of an uncanny sense than English is conveying. Nonetheless, the story is straight up realism. Just a few pages in, the narrator begins consuming the seeds of the moonflower her sister gives her for her birthday to help combat her severe asthma. The story unfolds inevitably from there. (The chilling thing about the tale is really how easily I could see any number of people I know doing the exact same thing.)
I liked this one better than Tainaron (the narrator is not an insufferable woman-child, but rather an adult struggling with illness and reality). Still, I am waiting for the story from this author that really wows me. And I really wish this had been fantasy. And had involved the Voynich Manuscript.
Final verdict: Don't sprinkle seeds from strange plants on your sandwich, people. (At least check the internet first!)
Hold on to it. It's all--or nearly all--that you have. Try to set outside of it and your life will change irreversibly, assuming you survive at all.
...
The truth is always shared. A reality that belongs to only one person isn't real.
I think my poor reaction to this one is largely due to poor advertising. The author won the World Fantasy award for [b:Tainaron: Mail from Another City|1428609|Tainaron Mail from Another City|Leena Krohn|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1183510480s/1428609.jpg|1419102], and people who write about oversized insects are automatically compared to Kafka, so her books are being sold as fantasy or New Weird or surreal. This book is not any of those things, which is what I actually wanted. Also, the story has next to nothing to do with the Voynich Manuscript, even though the publisher's blurb implies it plays an important part in the tale (which I also wanted).
What this book actually is is a very lovely drawing of a mind unraveling as the narrator succumbs to datura poisoning, and also a very nice ramble through epistemology, told through the narrator's notes from the time, which she gives to an unnamed 'you'. (Authors do this to pull the reader in, to make them a character in the story, but I rarely find it effective. I always spend all my time trying to figure out who the 'you' is supposed to be in relation to the narrator. In this case, 'a close friend' is all the more detail we get.
Krohn is a wonderful writer. I very much enjoy her prose and her philosophical vignettes, and as with Tainaron, I found myself wondering if the original Finnish does not somehow convey more of an uncanny sense than English is conveying. Nonetheless, the story is straight up realism. Just a few pages in, the narrator begins consuming the seeds of the moonflower her sister gives her for her birthday to help combat her severe asthma. The story unfolds inevitably from there. (The chilling thing about the tale is really how easily I could see any number of people I know doing the exact same thing.)
I liked this one better than Tainaron (the narrator is not an insufferable woman-child, but rather an adult struggling with illness and reality). Still, I am waiting for the story from this author that really wows me. And I really wish this had been fantasy. And had involved the Voynich Manuscript.
Final verdict: Don't sprinkle seeds from strange plants on your sandwich, people. (At least check the internet first!)
wwtpeng's review
2.0
This novella is more a series of short stories with a central character adding a conversation element for the new characters in each story. There is a small underlying plot throughout the book and each time a plot element sneaked it, I got interested in the story again. But these plot elements were few and far between and weren't enough to make the book mostly boring. There were a few good reoccurring characters and a few good passages, especially the one about the singing fish.