explodinghead 's review for:

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward

4.0

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A wild book, and if I'm being honest, the story really loses its coherence in the final 10%. But, there's enough fun parallels / inversions to make that incoherence worth the trip. "Trip" being the key word. The book -- as I feel like most reviews have let on -- is an exploration of meta-fiction. A book within a book. A book that acknowledges you're reading a book. Some of that structure is interesting, and a lot of it feels like the kind of thing an MFA would try to beat out of you. Even though LOOKING GLASS SOUND isn't 100% successful in its aims, I respect the attempt and at how close Ward sticks the landing. For me, the emotional tendrils mostly started snapping under the weight of the concept. And there's a lot here that's interesting to say about True Crime, about authorship, about the life of trauma (and maybe the trauma of life too? *strokes chin in pretentious way*) delivered in a way that doesn't feel overly didactic. I'd rather an author try to sneak something by me rather than beat me over the head with their themes, and that's what we get here. Is 4/5 too high? Maybe, but I had a good time and would want to talk about this one with someone who's already read it.