A review by james1star
Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan

medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

I desperately wanted to love this book. The themes, setting, plot and writing style drew me in. But mostly it’s comparison and likeness to Sally Rooney, whom I adore, is what really made me want to read this. But alas… I kinda hated it. I don’t want to go on too long as this I already feel has taken up too much of my time enough but Yhh.

Plot: Irish postgrad Ava teaches rich kids English in Hong Kong, has relationship with a rich banker who buys her stuff and she questions it, he leaves for a bit she she becomes infatuated with a woman, they have a relationship and that’s all you’re getting… read one the spoiler reviews for more. 

What I liked: there were definitely some memorable quotes and snippets and impactful parts. The writing is ‘good’ and for the most part understandable, with somewhat lyrical or at least complex (I’m not that good at explaining) descriptions of things. It did have some witty and interesting takes in parts that made me LOL. The book also deals with quite a lot of topics e.g. class, relationships, power dynamics, sexuality, minor alludes to racism (I’ll develop in a sec) among others which is good but I personally don’t feel they were dealt with the best but Yhh… I dunno. 

What I didn’t like: as it’s in my head now I’ll talk about this first but I don’t think the bi/pan(/ I don’t know what to ‘label’ Ava because she doesn’t and of course we don’t need to but Yhh someone who has an intimate relationship with people of multiple genders) rep is not the best because Ava is ‘cheating’ on her partners and this is a big stereotype of the bi community sooo. Also racism can be alluded to like the way Edith’s mum treats the probably southeast Asian helper where in Hong Kong this inter-Asian racism is a big problem and Dolan mentions it very slightly but doesn’t extrapolate. Furthermore, many of the Asian characters fit stereotypes like the children Ava teachers being typical-Asian-Tiger-kids-who-don’t-really-want-to-learn-English-but-are-made-to and are described as ‘copycats’ - Edith also fits this persona and her mum being a typical Asian tiger mum. 

Next paragraph for the characters. I honestly didn’t like any of them and not in an ‘intriguing villain’ kinda way but more so ‘I could not care less if you do or don’t get what you want’ kinda way. They weren’t really developed and shown to be quite shallow with certain characteristics being repeated too much - Julian’s bankerness, richness, Oxford-graduateness, whiteness and so on… he’s also just not very nice. Ava too is just very meh and Edith, albeit the best, is also just okay bordering on nice but like I dunno I can’t really elaborate without lying. And being a character based novel you do need to have this level of complexity or lovableness to keep wanting to read on but I did not - I really didn’t enjoy reading this book it felt like I was being forced to. 

Final point, the writing in this book makes Sally Rooney look subtle… and to me that says A LOT. I definitely got this ‘I’m flexing my English degree’ ‘I know lots of big, complex, intellectual words and I don’t care if you don’t also know them’ and ‘imma confuse these readers’ kinda vibe - I went off on one a bit and lost my train of thought but yhhh it’s pretentious. And this isn’t always a bad thing if you have the big brain energy vibe but I don’t really, at least not to Naoise Dolan’s extent. Furthermore I felt it had the pretentious and ‘gobly-goop’ writing style like Rooney on the various topics (with big discussions on arguably benign things but are important in the moment and to individuals and Yhh but not on the larger scale… my brain always fuzzes trying to sum up this type of writing) but without the real cusp or direct meaningfulness that has the lasting impact on you.

I could honestly talk a lot about this book so maybe it’s not that bad but… I still don’t like it. Okayish plot with some takeaways but predominantly unlikable characters in a pretentious writing style and some harmful stereotypes. 

P.S. the plot was just like ehhh with lots of ‘why are you doing that?’ ‘Really? People talk and act like that? Really? Ummmm I have differing opinions’ and the logicality is questionable at some points too. 
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