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A review by iamhereforthebooks
The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild
1.0
So this was going to be my original review:
I’ll start by saying that I did like this, but I think I would have loved this book instead of barely enjoying it if only the author would have kept things simpler. The story about the missing picture is good and enthralling, but then you get lost in a sea of characters that for the most part don’t bring anything interesting to the story.
I can honestly say that there was not a single character that I truly liked. At first I was happy to read about a flawed female MC (Annie) that is trying to get her life back on track after getting out of a very long and not entirely healthy relationship, but the thing is that although we are told that she wants to move on, it’s only way ahead into the story that she actually does something to try to move on, and her obsession with ‘not ending up alone’ truly bothered me. She also has this love/hate relationship with her mom, a woman that Annie does not respect at all, which I though was rich because many of the things that she cannot stand in her mom were the same things that made me want to smack Annie. Annie and Jesse’s love story is so random that I don’t understand why the author bothered with it at all…I suppose that in a book called The Improbability of Love there should be some kind of love story, but we already had that!! The book is absolutely full of love for art, and there’s plenty of bittersweet love stories surrounding the picture, there was really no need for this – or if you are determined to include it, please don’t write it as a really bad case of teenage insta-lust and try to make it pass for a tru wuv story.
I know what you’re thinking, so far there’s not a lot going on for this book, but I still gave it 3 stars… as I said at the beginning I did like it, but it was mainly Memling and Rebecca’s story and relationship that kept me reading – it really would have been a much, much better book if this would have been its main focus. Then there’s of course the actual story of the picture, which was pretty good too, and there’s tons and tons of beautiful art and I absolutely love art :)
I wrote that at lunch time, when I had less than 20% of the book left, thinking that I would finish it this evening and maybe change my review if the book improved with the ending. It did not. In fact, at 85% the book takes a turn so unbelievable, so utterly ridiculous that I almost DNFed this. In the end I started to skip pages like there was no tomorrow just to see how the author was going to solve the mess. I know this is supposed to be a social critique/satire, but to me it was pompous and as I said, utterly ridiculous. I'll leave you with my favourite quote:
She is a miserable specimen. Broke, single, in her thirties - her life is a kind of prison already
(Rebecca about Annie. Btw, she's 31)
I’ll start by saying that I did like this, but I think I would have loved this book instead of barely enjoying it if only the author would have kept things simpler. The story about the missing picture is good and enthralling, but then you get lost in a sea of characters that for the most part don’t bring anything interesting to the story.
I can honestly say that there was not a single character that I truly liked. At first I was happy to read about a flawed female MC (Annie) that is trying to get her life back on track after getting out of a very long and not entirely healthy relationship, but the thing is that although we are told that she wants to move on, it’s only way ahead into the story that she actually does something to try to move on, and her obsession with ‘not ending up alone’ truly bothered me. She also has this love/hate relationship with her mom, a woman that Annie does not respect at all, which I though was rich because many of the things that she cannot stand in her mom were the same things that made me want to smack Annie. Annie and Jesse’s love story is so random that I don’t understand why the author bothered with it at all…I suppose that in a book called The Improbability of Love there should be some kind of love story, but we already had that!! The book is absolutely full of love for art, and there’s plenty of bittersweet love stories surrounding the picture, there was really no need for this – or if you are determined to include it, please don’t write it as a really bad case of teenage insta-lust and try to make it pass for a tru wuv story.
I know what you’re thinking, so far there’s not a lot going on for this book, but I still gave it 3 stars… as I said at the beginning I did like it, but it was mainly Memling and Rebecca’s story and relationship that kept me reading – it really would have been a much, much better book if this would have been its main focus. Then there’s of course the actual story of the picture, which was pretty good too, and there’s tons and tons of beautiful art and I absolutely love art :)
I wrote that at lunch time, when I had less than 20% of the book left, thinking that I would finish it this evening and maybe change my review if the book improved with the ending. It did not. In fact, at 85% the book takes a turn so unbelievable, so utterly ridiculous that I almost DNFed this. In the end I started to skip pages like there was no tomorrow just to see how the author was going to solve the mess. I know this is supposed to be a social critique/satire, but to me it was pompous and as I said, utterly ridiculous. I'll leave you with my favourite quote:
She is a miserable specimen. Broke, single, in her thirties - her life is a kind of prison already
(Rebecca about Annie. Btw, she's 31)