You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
fsb95 's review for:
The Discomfort of Evening
by Lucas Rijneveld
This is by far the most excruciating and exhausting drivel I have ever wasted my time on.
It starts off promising; there is something charming to the unique narrative voice and the lengthy descriptions of the mundane. It even elicits an occasional chuckle. But as it goes on this style quickly gets old and repetitive, and now that I’ve finished, I hate similes with a burning passion.
The worst thing about this book is that nothing really HAPPENS. I was so tempted to give up once I was halfway through, but I struggled on to the very last page in the vain hope that there would be some redeeming twist. Alas, no.
Sure, Matthies dies at one point (not that this matters much, the reader isn’t really given a reason to care about Matthies in the first place), and besides that a bunch of shocking scenes take place.
But none of the characters (including Jas, the narrator) really develop in any meaningful way. They start out aloof and unrelatable, and they remain aloof and unrelatable. They don’t even seem real, as such; they are practically one-dimensional.
Essentially, this is a plotless chronology of detailed descriptions of mundane occurrences, sprinkled with inane elements of shock - incest, child grooming, bestiality, excrement, random references to the Nazis. I have no objection to controversial content in literature so long as it has some kind of purpose or meaning.
As it is, this reads like the work of a borderline sociopathic teenager who (a) has just become aware of the concept of a simile and (b) wanted to put to paper the most disturbing scenes they could come up with.
How on earth this nonsense managed to get published, never mind winning the International Booker Prize, is thoroughly beyond me. I’ve read an anthology of short stories by high schoolers that was more worth my time.
It starts off promising; there is something charming to the unique narrative voice and the lengthy descriptions of the mundane. It even elicits an occasional chuckle. But as it goes on this style quickly gets old and repetitive, and now that I’ve finished, I hate similes with a burning passion.
The worst thing about this book is that nothing really HAPPENS. I was so tempted to give up once I was halfway through, but I struggled on to the very last page in the vain hope that there would be some redeeming twist. Alas, no.
Sure, Matthies dies at one point (not that this matters much, the reader isn’t really given a reason to care about Matthies in the first place), and besides that a bunch of shocking scenes take place.
But none of the characters (including Jas, the narrator) really develop in any meaningful way. They start out aloof and unrelatable, and they remain aloof and unrelatable. They don’t even seem real, as such; they are practically one-dimensional.
Essentially, this is a plotless chronology of detailed descriptions of mundane occurrences, sprinkled with inane elements of shock - incest, child grooming, bestiality, excrement, random references to the Nazis. I have no objection to controversial content in literature so long as it has some kind of purpose or meaning.
As it is, this reads like the work of a borderline sociopathic teenager who (a) has just become aware of the concept of a simile and (b) wanted to put to paper the most disturbing scenes they could come up with.
How on earth this nonsense managed to get published, never mind winning the International Booker Prize, is thoroughly beyond me. I’ve read an anthology of short stories by high schoolers that was more worth my time.