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A review by mrsdragon
Darling Jim by Christian Mørk
2.0
This book bothered me in little ways. The overall story was great--I was compulsed to keep reading, wanting to see the reveal.
But....(spoilers ahoy) the entire conceit of it required some serious suspension of disbelief. You have two women locked in a room, poisioned, half starved, bent on murder, borderline insane...and they are going to write to non overlapping accounts that hand off at just the right spot, write in a fairly flowerly manner (describing small details, long sentence structure) including a detailed account of the story teller's stories? REALLY? (And where did they get the books anyway? And the pens?)
And Aoife's reason for being away? Completely predictable. The only bizarre thing is that it would necessarily last 3 years.
The story itself, although ostensibly about "strong women", is really a male power fantasy. Oh really, a male writer telling a story about a male story teller whose stories compel women to do his bidding, to hard core fan girl, to NEED to sleep with him? *rolls eyes* And of course, the women can only live on through Niall, even though Aoife AND HER DAUGHTER are both alive. And naturally the one woman who can resist the story teller's charms is a lesbian...So many obvious, stereotypical, tropes...
But....(spoilers ahoy) the entire conceit of it required some serious suspension of disbelief. You have two women locked in a room, poisioned, half starved, bent on murder, borderline insane...and they are going to write to non overlapping accounts that hand off at just the right spot, write in a fairly flowerly manner (describing small details, long sentence structure) including a detailed account of the story teller's stories? REALLY? (And where did they get the books anyway? And the pens?)
And Aoife's reason for being away? Completely predictable. The only bizarre thing is that it would necessarily last 3 years.
The story itself, although ostensibly about "strong women", is really a male power fantasy. Oh really, a male writer telling a story about a male story teller whose stories compel women to do his bidding, to hard core fan girl, to NEED to sleep with him? *rolls eyes* And of course, the women can only live on through Niall, even though Aoife AND HER DAUGHTER are both alive. And naturally the one woman who can resist the story teller's charms is a lesbian...So many obvious, stereotypical, tropes...