A review by rizzle
Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs by Lina Wolff

3.0

There's a lot to like about this book. There are many beautiful sentences (example: "Only my fathers have all been mayfly dads, the kind that are here one day and gone after three days at most.") that just stick, particularly since this is also a translation. The theme also has huge potential and the story seems like an interesting one to tell.

But this book doesn't go far enough. Maybe I'm getting sick of books that are half short anecdote, loosely tied stories and half observations of a person/event from afar. The lack of emotion and intensity exists because the main plot characters aren't the storytellers (similar, I think to other books like [b:My Name Is Lucy Barton|25893709|My Name Is Lucy Barton|Elizabeth Strout|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1450653428s/25893709.jpg|45584499], [b:The Vegetarian|25489025|The Vegetarian|Han Kang|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1478196580s/25489025.jpg|18449744], [b:Outline|21400742|Outline|Rachel Cusk|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1403832251s/21400742.jpg|40698498]). I don't like this style; it doesn't commit enough and isn't really that engaging.

Found via The Morning News' Tournament of Books 2017 Longlist.