A review by jesselyn
The Hundred-Year Flood by Matthew Salesses

2.0

I really wanted to like this book. For the first 80 pages I believed there was hope. Salesses's prose is lovely and there were so many lines I underlined and wanted to copy down. I'm a fan of lyrical novels and usually prefer beautiful, thoughtful writing to fast-paced plots but even for me this book was slow. And so bleak I found myself dreading picking it back up. If I hadn't been reading this for the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge there is no way I'd have persevered. The author's note mentioned that he spent a decade writing it and I'm not surprised. The novel has a tortured quality to it. If Salesses writes another novel, I would give it a try because I really did enjoy his prose but I would never recommend this book.