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jacob_s 's review for:
Prayer for the Living
by Ben Okri
This was my first encounter with Ben Okri's work, and his writing is beautiful - economical, yet elegant. These stories grappled with complex ideas about reality, truth, and perception, and I was particularly moved by "Dreaming of Byzantium" and "Don Ki-Otah and the Ambiguity of Reading" - the former, about yearning for places we've never visited, was evocative, while the latter left me feeling convicted about the rate at which I tear through books (Something Okri is clearly passionate about: The epigraph to the entire book is "Read slowly").
Still, my reaction to this book was similar to how I feel about most collections of short stories. They're inherently uneven - one is bound to enjoy some stories more than others - and inevitably feel a bit truncated; sometimes I finished a story wishing there were a whole novel set in that world, while other times I finished wondering why I'd bothered.
Despite my misgivings about the short story collection as a format, I was hooked by Okri's writing - I'm interested in reading more in the future.
Still, my reaction to this book was similar to how I feel about most collections of short stories. They're inherently uneven - one is bound to enjoy some stories more than others - and inevitably feel a bit truncated; sometimes I finished a story wishing there were a whole novel set in that world, while other times I finished wondering why I'd bothered.
Despite my misgivings about the short story collection as a format, I was hooked by Okri's writing - I'm interested in reading more in the future.