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lwheels 's review for:
The Latecomer
by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Korelitz can write - and it's pretty. But fuck, man, this book could've been 12 pages long.
Approximately three things happened in this book that actually made you want to keep reading, and those lasted for a total of 15/437 pages.
Besides that, these human beings were god damned reprehensible. Not gross teenagers, not troubled, not upsetting - FUCKING HORRIFIC. Irredeemable. Painful to read. I genuinely hated this book. The fact that she wrote The Plot, which I adored, and also wrote this, is irreconcilable in my head.
Why 2 stars then, you ask? Simply because the woman can weave prose, and make me feel this much. But good lord, you could literally skip HUNDREDS of pages and not miss a single fucking thing, and that is not an exaggeration. I mean literally, this book could've been chopped to actual 12 pages, a synopsis, perhaps, and gotten the same reaction out of me except better, because then I would've have to be consistently punched in the fucking throat by the horrendous behavior of these characters.
Save yourself the time with a quick overview:
Johanna continuously shows love and adoration for a bunch of people who continuously treat her like she's a piece of shit. And she not only takes it, she does the most stereotypical woman thing ever: ANOTHER BABY WILL FIX IT! (fuck this fucking trope)
Salo is a fuck. He's maybe a sociopath? I don't know. But it was a happy day when he fucking died.
Sally is a self-loather who blames everyone around her for everything, even when she does it to herself, and when she does realize she's made a mistake, she's 36 and barely make an effort to correct until someone else approaches her and it's convenient to apologize.. but that's it. She still doesn't do much of anything else.
Lewyn is a pathetic loner who quietly blames his sadsack-ness on others, though he is the most likable because at least he's not a constant garbage pig.
Harrison is INDESCRIBABLY HORRIFIC. The fact that his parents allow him to speak without breaking his fucking jaw blows my mind. I do not approve of violence but if a child ever presumed to come out of my body and then treat another human the way that he did, I would tell him to fuck off and never come back, and I certainly wouldn't pay for his fancy ass education while he ignored me except for when he told me I was pathetic and stupid. And then as an adult he's just a bigger complete fuck. I fucking hate him.
The Latecomer/Phoebe, who somehow knows the extreme detail of their lives enough to be the narrator of this clusterfuck of a novel, someone is so boring as a human that she ends up being a mini Harrison at the end?
And the other Latecomer, who is not a person at all except for one random excerpt at the end which was entertaining but ended quickly and we didn't care again?
No plot. Just a bunch of assholes being fucking assholes to each other. Literally. That's literally it. THAT'S THE BOOK.
The more I think about it, the more ragey I get about this book. The biggest of face palms for this travesty.
Approximately three things happened in this book that actually made you want to keep reading, and those lasted for a total of 15/437 pages.
Besides that, these human beings were god damned reprehensible. Not gross teenagers, not troubled, not upsetting - FUCKING HORRIFIC. Irredeemable. Painful to read. I genuinely hated this book. The fact that she wrote The Plot, which I adored, and also wrote this, is irreconcilable in my head.
Why 2 stars then, you ask? Simply because the woman can weave prose, and make me feel this much. But good lord, you could literally skip HUNDREDS of pages and not miss a single fucking thing, and that is not an exaggeration. I mean literally, this book could've been chopped to actual 12 pages, a synopsis, perhaps, and gotten the same reaction out of me except better, because then I would've have to be consistently punched in the fucking throat by the horrendous behavior of these characters.
Save yourself the time with a quick overview:
Johanna continuously shows love and adoration for a bunch of people who continuously treat her like she's a piece of shit. And she not only takes it, she does the most stereotypical woman thing ever: ANOTHER BABY WILL FIX IT! (fuck this fucking trope)
Salo is a fuck. He's maybe a sociopath? I don't know. But it was a happy day when he fucking died.
Sally is a self-loather who blames everyone around her for everything, even when she does it to herself, and when she does realize she's made a mistake, she's 36 and barely make an effort to correct until someone else approaches her and it's convenient to apologize.. but that's it. She still doesn't do much of anything else.
Lewyn is a pathetic loner who quietly blames his sadsack-ness on others, though he is the most likable because at least he's not a constant garbage pig.
Harrison is INDESCRIBABLY HORRIFIC. The fact that his parents allow him to speak without breaking his fucking jaw blows my mind. I do not approve of violence but if a child ever presumed to come out of my body and then treat another human the way that he did, I would tell him to fuck off and never come back, and I certainly wouldn't pay for his fancy ass education while he ignored me except for when he told me I was pathetic and stupid. And then as an adult he's just a bigger complete fuck. I fucking hate him.
The Latecomer/Phoebe, who somehow knows the extreme detail of their lives enough to be the narrator of this clusterfuck of a novel, someone is so boring as a human that she ends up being a mini Harrison at the end?
And the other Latecomer, who is not a person at all except for one random excerpt at the end which was entertaining but ended quickly and we didn't care again?
No plot. Just a bunch of assholes being fucking assholes to each other. Literally. That's literally it. THAT'S THE BOOK.
The more I think about it, the more ragey I get about this book. The biggest of face palms for this travesty.