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stucifer_ 's review for:
The World Cannot Give
by Tara Isabella Burton
(ARC received via goodreads giveaway)
Okay first things first : this book has a scene of attempted sexual assault, as well as suicide and murder. It's a failing of the publisher to not make content warnings for these things available.
The book itself : Burton has created a novel chock full of complex characters who are hard to write off as any one thing. A hard task, when the vast majority of the characters are teenagers, so easy to stereotype and simplify. I found a lot of the motivations here really relatable : the youthful, desperate desire to be Important (World-Historical, in the parlance of this book), the headlong throwing of oneself into causes that matter so much to you, the confusing push and pull of desire and attraction, or lack thereof, both on one's own part and on the part of others. It's really nice to read so many people who are so very morally grey; it's very human.
That said. The character who is set up to be the most dynamic and interesting, is to me, the least dimensional : Virginia Strauss. Everyone is in love with her (literally. everyone.) and I do not know why. She is manipulative, bossy, self-obsessed, and cruel, and yet these teens are in her thrall and carry out her (awful) wishes, even knowing they shouldn't. Burton wrote all of these characters as smart! To the extent that their intelligence (and reading history) snaps my suspension of disbelief that they are teenagers in high school right in half. Yet they become submissive and stupid to the least likable person to be found in this whole book. it just doesn't track.
I also appreciate this book's portrayal of queer sexuality, but am a bit niggled by its lowkey aversion of asexuality. It's never mentioned, which is fine, but many characters bemoan the centralized importance of sex to the lives of others, which is such an ace feeling! Yet the novel has these characters recognize the importance of sex to their own lives, in different ways, and I am just not entirely comfortable with how it lands. I don't think any of the characters *have* to be ace or it's bad; I think though, that Burton wrote ace characters but didn't realize it and/or didn't want to recognize it, and so the introduction of sexuality later feels a bit shoehorned.
I remain torn on whether I think the big Incident of the final act is pure shock value to the reader, or merely shocking in a purposeful way for Laura. The very fact that I don't know explains why I land pretty middle-of-the-road on this one. There's a lot of interesting character dynamics and revelations and arcs that could be in play, but I'm not sure enough in the writing to know that they are there. Ultimately, I think Burton wrote some really interesting and complex characters, and then didn't quite deliver on making their interpersonal dynamics clear to the reader.
Okay first things first : this book has a scene of attempted sexual assault, as well as suicide and murder. It's a failing of the publisher to not make content warnings for these things available.
The book itself : Burton has created a novel chock full of complex characters who are hard to write off as any one thing. A hard task, when the vast majority of the characters are teenagers, so easy to stereotype and simplify. I found a lot of the motivations here really relatable : the youthful, desperate desire to be Important (World-Historical, in the parlance of this book), the headlong throwing of oneself into causes that matter so much to you, the confusing push and pull of desire and attraction, or lack thereof, both on one's own part and on the part of others. It's really nice to read so many people who are so very morally grey; it's very human.
That said. The character who is set up to be the most dynamic and interesting, is to me, the least dimensional : Virginia Strauss. Everyone is in love with her (literally. everyone.) and I do not know why. She is manipulative, bossy, self-obsessed, and cruel, and yet these teens are in her thrall and carry out her (awful) wishes, even knowing they shouldn't. Burton wrote all of these characters as smart! To the extent that their intelligence (and reading history) snaps my suspension of disbelief that they are teenagers in high school right in half. Yet they become submissive and stupid to the least likable person to be found in this whole book. it just doesn't track.
I also appreciate this book's portrayal of queer sexuality, but am a bit niggled by its lowkey aversion of asexuality. It's never mentioned, which is fine, but many characters bemoan the centralized importance of sex to the lives of others, which is such an ace feeling! Yet the novel has these characters recognize the importance of sex to their own lives, in different ways, and I am just not entirely comfortable with how it lands. I don't think any of the characters *have* to be ace or it's bad; I think though, that Burton wrote ace characters but didn't realize it and/or didn't want to recognize it, and so the introduction of sexuality later feels a bit shoehorned.
I remain torn on whether I think the big Incident of the final act is pure shock value to the reader, or merely shocking in a purposeful way for Laura. The very fact that I don't know explains why I land pretty middle-of-the-road on this one. There's a lot of interesting character dynamics and revelations and arcs that could be in play, but I'm not sure enough in the writing to know that they are there. Ultimately, I think Burton wrote some really interesting and complex characters, and then didn't quite deliver on making their interpersonal dynamics clear to the reader.