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A review by clarepods15
Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham
3.0
A memoir-esque novel about politics, navigating your mid twenties, and religion is basically my dream book. Obviously I really wanted to love this book, but unfortunately a lot of it just fell flat. The story moved too quickly and unswiftly between David’s current life working on Obama’s 2008 campaign and his reflections on his past and the things he learns along the way. The story about his campaign was interesting, and his reflections were very insightful and beautifully written, but it was often unclear when he moved between the two and it made the story hard to follow. The ending of the book was also somewhat unsatisfactory and I was left wondering what the point of it all was.
My main critique of the book, however, was not in its content but its style. I have never seen so many punctuation-ridden, paragraph long, run on sentences since I read Kant in my college philosophy classes. I often had to reread sentences several times to understand them because one sentence would literally contain 5 separate clauses.
With all that being said, the reflection aspect of this book, specifically the spiritual/religious aspect was beautiful. Cunningham perfectly captures how it feels to try to discover, understand, and invent yourself as a young and newly independent adult— to straddle belief and disbelief, and find purpose in a world that seems at best cruel, and at worst meaningless.
My main critique of the book, however, was not in its content but its style. I have never seen so many punctuation-ridden, paragraph long, run on sentences since I read Kant in my college philosophy classes. I often had to reread sentences several times to understand them because one sentence would literally contain 5 separate clauses.
With all that being said, the reflection aspect of this book, specifically the spiritual/religious aspect was beautiful. Cunningham perfectly captures how it feels to try to discover, understand, and invent yourself as a young and newly independent adult— to straddle belief and disbelief, and find purpose in a world that seems at best cruel, and at worst meaningless.