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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Why would anyone want to spend a few days of their life reading about a main character who is apathetic, depressed, and surrounded by things like sagging sofas and cigarette butts?
It's not a bad book I just had trouble getting into it for whatever reason.
This book is fantastic. The writing is poignant, rich in metaphor. The imaginative setting- an alternate universe 2007 where Jews settled in Alaska after WW2 instead of Israel— is ripe for Chabon’s exploration of home, power, imperialism/settler colonialism, the struggles of the Jewish diaspora, Zionism, faith, and family. It’s a hard hitting book. The noir-style mystery itself is not really solvable by the reader, but that’s not what the book is about. It’s about people in terrible situations with no good choices available to them trying anyways to do their best & help others even at great personal cost. I loved it
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
Not science fiction, but speculative fiction with an alternative history which is creative in it's settings and characters. Chabon is elegant in his prose, engaging all of one senses in setting scenes with flowing descriptions of sights, smells, and sounds. As with his other works, his characters are truly the highlight of his stories. They are well-rounded, flawed, relatable, and come to life on the pages. This is one like his work The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay which I hope to revisit again!
This was my first Chabon and I liked it. Lyrical writing style, great metaphors, and entertaining. It didn't blow me away, but it kept me interested.
medium-paced
Not sure if I was just in a reading slump or if this book really put me off but it took a long time to get through. I really enjoyed the last third. Read for the Read Harder Challenge, an alternate history novel.
adventurous
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
4.5 stars!
Impressive world building—from fake languages to fake places to fake histories to fake historical events—and an intriguing story that has truly soaring (and sinking) moments that provide a raw and masterful look into the human soul make up for a book that is times genuinely opaque and somewhat frustrating in its highfalutin reach that can undercut the point it’s making. I appreciate when a book is a puzzle in so many ways, but when prose is so dense that it chunks up the storytelling, at least for this dullard, and especially at the start when I was trying to adjust to the groove of this book, it can be a bit much.
That said, once I was on board I was very on board. Such an enchanting and fascinating twist of the noir detective story!
That said, in the back of the book, Chabon is asked about criticisms regarding his writing of (or even not bothering to include) women, he said something like “yeah that’s something I’ll have to work on.” And I was like…you’ll have to work on trying harder to include women in your book and writing them as full characters? I feel like that might been a good idea before you were at this level! THAT said, I did like Bina in this and wish there was more of her.
I’ll be thinking about this one for a bit, probably, for better or worse. It got under my skin, as tales of schmuck’s who are trying to be better often do.
Impressive world building—from fake languages to fake places to fake histories to fake historical events—and an intriguing story that has truly soaring (and sinking) moments that provide a raw and masterful look into the human soul make up for a book that is times genuinely opaque and somewhat frustrating in its highfalutin reach that can undercut the point it’s making. I appreciate when a book is a puzzle in so many ways, but when prose is so dense that it chunks up the storytelling, at least for this dullard, and especially at the start when I was trying to adjust to the groove of this book, it can be a bit much.
That said, once I was on board I was very on board. Such an enchanting and fascinating twist of the noir detective story!
That said, in the back of the book, Chabon is asked about criticisms regarding his writing of (or even not bothering to include) women, he said something like “yeah that’s something I’ll have to work on.” And I was like…you’ll have to work on trying harder to include women in your book and writing them as full characters? I feel like that might been a good idea before you were at this level! THAT said, I did like Bina in this and wish there was more of her.
I’ll be thinking about this one for a bit, probably, for better or worse. It got under my skin, as tales of schmuck’s who are trying to be better often do.