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readingandranunculus 's review for:
The Shadow Land
by Elizabeth Kostova
Thank you to Netgalley, the author and the publishers for providing me with an advance copy of this book.
I want to give this book more than 3.5 stars, but less than a full 4 stars, but as Goodreads is Goodreads, 4 stars it is.
I found The Shadow Land to be a very good novel in many ways, yet I did have a few gripes with it, which I'd like to get out of the way so I can get to complimenting it.
The first gripe being with the way in which Elizabeth Kostova, the author, writes. She is a talented writer, for sure, but I struggled with her usage of overly-complicated words that felt gratuitous, as if she was trying hard to prove to me of her intelligence, of which I was already aware. I wouldn't even call it 'flowery' language, as it didn't aid with beautiful descriptions. Just these big words plonked in the middle of otherwise basic sentences, and it felt very forced. I kept having to press down on a word in the reader app to have the word defined, which quickly became tedious.
Secondly, her descriptions, which are a tag-along to her use of complicated words. Kostova described everything from people to places in great detail, which, for a reader, is usually wonderful, yet I could rarely paint a mental picture of what she was describing. I had a hard time seeing what she was showing me, and I felt it lessened the quality of the story on a whole. She frequently used the words "weirdly" and "strangely" as adjectives, but that gives me more of a general vibe, rather than providing me with visual descriptions that I can go to in my mind.
For example, she described a painting toward the middle of the book as "benignly painted in oils," and I have no idea what that means. Maybe because I have zero background in art, and that's on me, but I don't believe I should have to as a reader just so I can have a mental picture of a painting on a wall. Another example was in describing one of the main protagonists, as she writes, "His face was already not quite young." I'm not sure what that means. Is he young? Not quite? Already not quite? It exasperated me a little bit, as might be evident.
Gripes out of the way, I did indeed enjoy this novel. I learned much about Bulgaria and its culture, which I took great pleasure in. Understanding foreign traditions and ways of life different to what I know is something I treasure, and I definitely got that from The Shadow Land. Yet another country destroyed by wars and by political factionalism, where nobody was safe—even the most innocent of countrymen and women.
I wasn't expecting a slow-burning quasi murder mystery, with complex, endearing characters. The author takes us to mountainous villages and post-Communist Bulgarian cities, each as important as the protagonist, Alexandra, the young American who travels to Bulgaria to teach English, and the accompanying cast. Present and past are intertwined masterfully, and I appreciate that I was engrossed by both sides of history, not one more than the other. Of course, they come together in the end, and I found it to be really well done.
I want to give this book more than 3.5 stars, but less than a full 4 stars, but as Goodreads is Goodreads, 4 stars it is.
I found The Shadow Land to be a very good novel in many ways, yet I did have a few gripes with it, which I'd like to get out of the way so I can get to complimenting it.
The first gripe being with the way in which Elizabeth Kostova, the author, writes. She is a talented writer, for sure, but I struggled with her usage of overly-complicated words that felt gratuitous, as if she was trying hard to prove to me of her intelligence, of which I was already aware. I wouldn't even call it 'flowery' language, as it didn't aid with beautiful descriptions. Just these big words plonked in the middle of otherwise basic sentences, and it felt very forced. I kept having to press down on a word in the reader app to have the word defined, which quickly became tedious.
Secondly, her descriptions, which are a tag-along to her use of complicated words. Kostova described everything from people to places in great detail, which, for a reader, is usually wonderful, yet I could rarely paint a mental picture of what she was describing. I had a hard time seeing what she was showing me, and I felt it lessened the quality of the story on a whole. She frequently used the words "weirdly" and "strangely" as adjectives, but that gives me more of a general vibe, rather than providing me with visual descriptions that I can go to in my mind.
For example, she described a painting toward the middle of the book as "benignly painted in oils," and I have no idea what that means. Maybe because I have zero background in art, and that's on me, but I don't believe I should have to as a reader just so I can have a mental picture of a painting on a wall. Another example was in describing one of the main protagonists, as she writes, "His face was already not quite young." I'm not sure what that means. Is he young? Not quite? Already not quite? It exasperated me a little bit, as might be evident.
Gripes out of the way, I did indeed enjoy this novel. I learned much about Bulgaria and its culture, which I took great pleasure in. Understanding foreign traditions and ways of life different to what I know is something I treasure, and I definitely got that from The Shadow Land. Yet another country destroyed by wars and by political factionalism, where nobody was safe—even the most innocent of countrymen and women.
I wasn't expecting a slow-burning quasi murder mystery, with complex, endearing characters. The author takes us to mountainous villages and post-Communist Bulgarian cities, each as important as the protagonist, Alexandra, the young American who travels to Bulgaria to teach English, and the accompanying cast. Present and past are intertwined masterfully, and I appreciate that I was engrossed by both sides of history, not one more than the other. Of course, they come together in the end, and I found it to be really well done.