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A review by guinness74
The Black Book by Lawrence Durrell
1.0
Do you remember the first time you opened a thesaurus and, suddenly, you were desperate to start using all the words? Even if you didn't know what they meant, they were replacements for words you thought you knew and it made you sound more intelligent, at least in your own head? Welcome to The Black Book.
This book is the straw that breaks me from having to read any more books that I don't understand and couldn't care less about. I assume that when this was written all the talk about vaginas and thrusting was somehow new and inventive, but even that is lost among the complete "word salad" that Durrell imposes on his readers. There are entire paragraphs that are like inside jokes laden with random letters as if he wrote this while playing Scrabble. They're big words and they're probably great to use in a novel, but if they don't make any sense, then it doesn't make much difference.
So, why did I keep reading? Well, there are occasional moments of clarity which lead one to believe that it's getting better. It was tantamount to standing in the rain without an umbrella and finding the random break in the clouds. Trust me on this one...it's going to keep raining. By the time I figured out that the rain would never stop, I was really too far gone to give up on it completely. So I just kept hoping for the sunshine moments to appear.
Rated 1 star because I have to rate it something, but at best it's 1/2 a star.
This book is the straw that breaks me from having to read any more books that I don't understand and couldn't care less about. I assume that when this was written all the talk about vaginas and thrusting was somehow new and inventive, but even that is lost among the complete "word salad" that Durrell imposes on his readers. There are entire paragraphs that are like inside jokes laden with random letters as if he wrote this while playing Scrabble. They're big words and they're probably great to use in a novel, but if they don't make any sense, then it doesn't make much difference.
So, why did I keep reading? Well, there are occasional moments of clarity which lead one to believe that it's getting better. It was tantamount to standing in the rain without an umbrella and finding the random break in the clouds. Trust me on this one...it's going to keep raining. By the time I figured out that the rain would never stop, I was really too far gone to give up on it completely. So I just kept hoping for the sunshine moments to appear.
Rated 1 star because I have to rate it something, but at best it's 1/2 a star.