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A review by rodneywilhite
The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar
5.0
This is maybe my favorite novel I've read in years. The way the narrative unfolds (and doesn't unfold) is so beautiful.
I think there are some commonalities with Faulkner in how the past and present are consistently intruding upon one another, and how time is more like an ebb and flow that occasionally washes over the story than a linear sequence of events. It also shares with The Sound and the Fury the structure of four personas telling the same story, each of them revising, clarifying, and complicating it.
However, and I mean this sincerely, Samatar has a much more deft touch than Faulkner and a better ear for the poetic.
I could go on and on, but this is such a formally excellent book, you just gotta read it yourself.
I think there are some commonalities with Faulkner in how the past and present are consistently intruding upon one another, and how time is more like an ebb and flow that occasionally washes over the story than a linear sequence of events. It also shares with The Sound and the Fury the structure of four personas telling the same story, each of them revising, clarifying, and complicating it.
However, and I mean this sincerely, Samatar has a much more deft touch than Faulkner and a better ear for the poetic.
I could go on and on, but this is such a formally excellent book, you just gotta read it yourself.