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A review by battog
The Adulterants by Joe Dunthorne
3.0
this book perplexed me, and i will try to explain why.
my first reaction to this book was, "lord, why am i reading about (mostly) white, working class millennial brits doing (mostly) white, working class millennial things: drinking too much, flirting inappropriately, shaming and being shamed online, trying to buy a house in an overpriced market, blah blah blah."
but the story got engaging in part three* and so i finished the book. but what i wanted from the book was not what it gave me. i wanted more depth to the characters, would have liked to know more about them. but then i thought, "do i really want to know more about them? they are not all that interesting." and that, i decided, is the point of this book: that the lives we think are interesting are truly banal.
ok, fine. then why write the book and why read it? well, that i have not worked out yet.
so, yeah.
*part three: for me, this was the most interesting part of the novel, but i read it while stoned. so i do not know if the drugs helped make it more engaging, or if it was truly engaging...either way, it probably helped me get through the novel, which in its own way is rather amusing, or perhaps telling, or perhaps fits with the very nature of my problems with the book itself and what it is critiquing. anyhoo, it was an experience.
my first reaction to this book was, "lord, why am i reading about (mostly) white, working class millennial brits doing (mostly) white, working class millennial things: drinking too much, flirting inappropriately, shaming and being shamed online, trying to buy a house in an overpriced market, blah blah blah."
but the story got engaging in part three* and so i finished the book. but what i wanted from the book was not what it gave me. i wanted more depth to the characters, would have liked to know more about them. but then i thought, "do i really want to know more about them? they are not all that interesting." and that, i decided, is the point of this book: that the lives we think are interesting are truly banal.
ok, fine. then why write the book and why read it? well, that i have not worked out yet.
so, yeah.
*part three: for me, this was the most interesting part of the novel, but i read it while stoned. so i do not know if the drugs helped make it more engaging, or if it was truly engaging...either way, it probably helped me get through the novel, which in its own way is rather amusing, or perhaps telling, or perhaps fits with the very nature of my problems with the book itself and what it is critiquing. anyhoo, it was an experience.