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A review by willia4
The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
3.0
I am no fan of the environment. Indeed, I am far more of an antifan. I long for the day when we are forced to flee to giant domed cities where we can finally solve the problems of insects and animals and humidity and sunburn and angry plants and all the other little evils waiting to strike in "the environment". I am also not a fan of terrorists. I hate them even more than I hate the environment.
All of which is to say that I am not the target audience for this book in which the main characters are all eco-terrorists and the plot follow their eco-terrorist activities as they attempt to spread unnecessary mayhem across the Southwest. I am not even in the neighborhood of being the audience for this book. Had the author known me, I am almost certain that he would not have been able to find any use for me. And I am pretty sure that I would feel the same about him.
So it was a tremendous surprise when I started liking this book. I'm not saying that it's a great book. And I wouldn't recommend it. But I was expecting this review to be a long catalog of the book's faults without a kind word for it.
And while there are certainly many faults to list (the most prominent being the weird notion that having a character pee is the height of comedy...), my heart just isn't in it.
The book is fine. Even entertaining. It didn't make me sympathetic to eco-terrorists but that would be a pretty tall order for a novel. So whatever.
It's fine.
All of which is to say that I am not the target audience for this book in which the main characters are all eco-terrorists and the plot follow their eco-terrorist activities as they attempt to spread unnecessary mayhem across the Southwest. I am not even in the neighborhood of being the audience for this book. Had the author known me, I am almost certain that he would not have been able to find any use for me. And I am pretty sure that I would feel the same about him.
So it was a tremendous surprise when I started liking this book. I'm not saying that it's a great book. And I wouldn't recommend it. But I was expecting this review to be a long catalog of the book's faults without a kind word for it.
And while there are certainly many faults to list (the most prominent being the weird notion that having a character pee is the height of comedy...), my heart just isn't in it.
The book is fine. Even entertaining. It didn't make me sympathetic to eco-terrorists but that would be a pretty tall order for a novel. So whatever.
It's fine.