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A review by greatlibraryofalexandra
Anthem by Noah Hawley
dark
funny
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Tough to rate, this one! Comments that it has Stephen King vibes ring so true - it's bizarre, disturbed, mystical, gritty, and the motif that focuses on children is definitely reminiscent of his work. In a tongue-in-cheek way, for me, it's also reminiscent of his work because I found it to be strikingly good at some points and outright drudgery at others.
I'd say for the first half of this book, I was so intrigued by the plotline and the themes: cynicism and sarcasm and irony and brutal irreverence mixed with sharp reflection on the world we live in and storylines so yanked from the headlines that it was both hair-rising and unoriginal in an annoying way. I liked the pace, and the exploration of our growing anxiety and malaise as a nation through the vehicle of a youthful suicide epidemic, juxtaposed against the way the parents struggled continuously to find out the "cause" while ignoring the obvious signs of illness.
The second half...well, there it often just devolved into messiness that didn't really always work for me. It seemed to literally lose the plot, and I found it took on preachy, pretentious "Parable of the Sower" vibes that had me rolling my eyes and starting to skim read - points were made and then repeated to an ad nauseum, and it felt like Hawley had decided (again, halfway through the book) that his readers were idiots, when in the first half he had trusted their intelligence.
It has a lot of the same elements as Eluetheria, Lord of the Flies, The Stand, It, and Parable of the Sower, and my feelings about all of those books run the gamut from love to hate, so this is a solid 3.5 for me, but definitely a highly readable and enjoyable one. It could have made more of an impact on my if it was shorter and subtler, and if it had not fallen into the trap of beating the reader over the head with the metaphor.
I'd say for the first half of this book, I was so intrigued by the plotline and the themes: cynicism and sarcasm and irony and brutal irreverence mixed with sharp reflection on the world we live in and storylines so yanked from the headlines that it was both hair-rising and unoriginal in an annoying way. I liked the pace, and the exploration of our growing anxiety and malaise as a nation through the vehicle of a youthful suicide epidemic, juxtaposed against the way the parents struggled continuously to find out the "cause" while ignoring the obvious signs of illness.
The second half...well, there it often just devolved into messiness that didn't really always work for me. It seemed to literally lose the plot, and I found it took on preachy, pretentious "Parable of the Sower" vibes that had me rolling my eyes and starting to skim read - points were made and then repeated to an ad nauseum, and it felt like Hawley had decided (again, halfway through the book) that his readers were idiots, when in the first half he had trusted their intelligence.
It has a lot of the same elements as Eluetheria, Lord of the Flies, The Stand, It, and Parable of the Sower, and my feelings about all of those books run the gamut from love to hate, so this is a solid 3.5 for me, but definitely a highly readable and enjoyable one. It could have made more of an impact on my if it was shorter and subtler, and if it had not fallen into the trap of beating the reader over the head with the metaphor.