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A review by charliereadsalot
The Octopus: A Story of California by Frank Norris
2.5
2.5 STARS
CW: death (including of loved ones), violence
I'm so glad I'm done with this now. As usual, I can appreciate this for certain interesting narrative strategies and a few instances that I really liked regarding themes and representation of the story. But generally, I just have to say that I do not enjoy naturalist writing... It bores me and so did this book for large spans.
Basically, the first half of this book was not interesting or appealing to me at all. There were so many characters, I did not care for any of them for the first 300 pages and I really felt bored because nothing was happening. This changed slightly in the second half when I was familiar with the characters and they had gone through a bit of development, and this is the reason the book got 2.5 stars instead of one.
Regarding what was happening, I enjoyed the sequence of the hare hunt and the shoot out most (unsurprisingly) but structurally, I liked the final chapter and end of the book. It really rounded out the work for me. Never would have picked this up had it not been for class and I definitely would have DNFed it if I had.
CW: death (including of loved ones), violence
I'm so glad I'm done with this now. As usual, I can appreciate this for certain interesting narrative strategies and a few instances that I really liked regarding themes and representation of the story. But generally, I just have to say that I do not enjoy naturalist writing... It bores me and so did this book for large spans.
Basically, the first half of this book was not interesting or appealing to me at all. There were so many characters, I did not care for any of them for the first 300 pages and I really felt bored because nothing was happening. This changed slightly in the second half when I was familiar with the characters and they had gone through a bit of development, and this is the reason the book got 2.5 stars instead of one.
Regarding what was happening, I enjoyed the sequence of the hare hunt and the shoot out most (unsurprisingly) but structurally, I liked the final chapter and end of the book. It really rounded out the work for me. Never would have picked this up had it not been for class and I definitely would have DNFed it if I had.