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A review by bybyberry
The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty by Vendela Vida
2.0
I read We Run The Tides by Vendela Vida in January and it's one of my favorite reads of 2023. So I was excited to explore more of her work. Sadly, this one didn't work for me.
Though I like the use of the second person writing, to immerse the reader, but otherwise, the writing feels a bit too straightforward for my taste. Crazy, given how much I loved the We Run The Tides prose (I guess it came out 6 years so that might explain it).
I like the idea of the story more than its execution. It's hard to connect with the character, given how little we know about her, and some of her choices made me eye-rolled too much to empathize with her. To put it plainly, I thought she was bit a dumb at times: I mean, who doesn't google the exchange rate when traveling to a country with a different currency? This is one example, but it's telling of how the unnamed narrator acts. Her sort of constant paranoia, especially at the beginning of the book, feels odd and misplaced. The story drifts in strange, hard-to-believe directions, and to top it off, the ending feels cliché.
Though I like the use of the second person writing, to immerse the reader, but otherwise, the writing feels a bit too straightforward for my taste. Crazy, given how much I loved the We Run The Tides prose (I guess it came out 6 years so that might explain it).
I like the idea of the story more than its execution. It's hard to connect with the character, given how little we know about her, and some of her choices made me eye-rolled too much to empathize with her. To put it plainly, I thought she was bit a dumb at times: I mean, who doesn't google the exchange rate when traveling to a country with a different currency? This is one example, but it's telling of how the unnamed narrator acts. Her sort of constant paranoia, especially at the beginning of the book, feels odd and misplaced. The story drifts in strange, hard-to-believe directions, and to top it off, the ending feels cliché.