Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
funny
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I am not someone that shies away from long books. I am someone who shies away from books with unreliable self loathing/aggrandizing middle aged male narrators who feel that no one recognizes their genius. Could not make it beyond page 200.
The most pretentious book about being pretentious I've ever read. Also like 400 pages too long.
slow-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
There really aren't the right words to explain what I think about this ambitious, outrageous, LONG, absurd, brilliantly written novel. It's twisty, it's clever, and I couldn't put it down even when I had no real sense that the book was actually going somewhere. B. is the ultimate unreliable/dubious narrator, a film critic to top all critics and I had no end of chuckles every time he ripped into a Charlie Kaufman film. This is a book that will remain in memory for a very long time (ironic given the subject matter of the forgotten movie), and definitely ranks up there with some of the best books I've read. Highly recommend, especially if you are a film lover.
Thanks, NetGalley and Random House for the read.
Thanks, NetGalley and Random House for the read.
I tried… I went away, came back and tried again. Just could not find a way into this book. It is one long, rambling monologue by a not very likeable protagonist. I can see others have felt quite differently but it did nothing for me. DNF.
A masterpiece, but really a lot of work to get through. To be honest, by the time I was getting to the end of this more than 700 page book, I was kind of ready to start reading something a little more straightforward, like a vampire novel. It's too bizarre to even summarize it, so I won't even try, but I am glad I finished it.
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The star rating really fails to give even a benchmark of my experience here. It's by far the funniest book I've read and it's a book I knew early on reading that I would want to read it again and again.
It's also on many instances rather tedious and on the whole lacked the emotional core that brings me to love Kaufman movies because it is simply too overstuffed with nonsense to give me space to breathe and possibly feel anything that relates to B. and thon's journey. Synecdoche New York was a two hour film I loved that sometimes felt like a three-month long film I hated. It was funny and the most powerfully affecting piece of cinema I'd henceforth experienced, and still is my favourite film for now. It's difficult to get from the beginning to the end but each half hour chunk was riveting -- it almost felt like it was not meant to be watched in one sitting (but that would deny so much power of the later acts).
Antkind is a bigass novel and since novels aren't meant to be read in one sitting one can imagine Kaufman wanting his reader to take their time and immerse themselves in maximalist hilarity. And I did for at least 300 pages. At a certain point I felt the book went beyond a point of no return where any intended swerve to the dramatic would fall apart due to the excessive, gloriously excessive absurdity, so I just thought I'd devour it quickly and laugh along the way. The book just didn't do much for me in the last 200 pages, but I think I'll grow more fond of it in time. It's a strange book in that, one would think 200 pages that seem inferior to the rest of the structure would indicate the book being too long, but if anything it isn't long enough. It needs to be turgid and excessive. That's central to so many aspects of the story.
And a common critique will likely be that Kaufman is clever enough to be bad on purpose...well, yes, kind of! He gets away with it. I would not write something remotely similar, but I'm glad it exists. I did not jive remotely with Gravity's Rainbow and DFW's narrative voice is like nails to a chalkboard, so I wonder if Antkind was intended to be an anti-postmodernist novel by having so many hallmarks of the style, and simply being too much. But books like this are always too much.
Books so grand and epic can have 200 mediocre pages and get 5 stars from me. 5 stars and a very, very, wary recommendation. I like Kaufman more than is probably healthy and this book is a much bigger commitment than Synecdoche or Anomalisa, and you will more readily discover whether or not you'll hate this book by watching one of those first.
It's also on many instances rather tedious and on the whole lacked the emotional core that brings me to love Kaufman movies because it is simply too overstuffed with nonsense to give me space to breathe and possibly feel anything that relates to B. and thon's journey. Synecdoche New York was a two hour film I loved that sometimes felt like a three-month long film I hated. It was funny and the most powerfully affecting piece of cinema I'd henceforth experienced, and still is my favourite film for now. It's difficult to get from the beginning to the end but each half hour chunk was riveting -- it almost felt like it was not meant to be watched in one sitting (but that would deny so much power of the later acts).
Antkind is a bigass novel and since novels aren't meant to be read in one sitting one can imagine Kaufman wanting his reader to take their time and immerse themselves in maximalist hilarity. And I did for at least 300 pages. At a certain point I felt the book went beyond a point of no return where any intended swerve to the dramatic would fall apart due to the excessive, gloriously excessive absurdity, so I just thought I'd devour it quickly and laugh along the way. The book just didn't do much for me in the last 200 pages, but I think I'll grow more fond of it in time. It's a strange book in that, one would think 200 pages that seem inferior to the rest of the structure would indicate the book being too long, but if anything it isn't long enough. It needs to be turgid and excessive. That's central to so many aspects of the story.
And a common critique will likely be that Kaufman is clever enough to be bad on purpose...well, yes, kind of! He gets away with it. I would not write something remotely similar, but I'm glad it exists. I did not jive remotely with Gravity's Rainbow and DFW's narrative voice is like nails to a chalkboard, so I wonder if Antkind was intended to be an anti-postmodernist novel by having so many hallmarks of the style, and simply being too much. But books like this are always too much.
Books so grand and epic can have 200 mediocre pages and get 5 stars from me. 5 stars and a very, very, wary recommendation. I like Kaufman more than is probably healthy and this book is a much bigger commitment than Synecdoche or Anomalisa, and you will more readily discover whether or not you'll hate this book by watching one of those first.