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A review by chantaal
Black Iris by Elliot Wake, Elliot Wake
Did not finish book.
Then we were downtown, skyscrapers vaulting around us, and if I let my eyes unfocus it became a frost of chrome and glass, the trunks of massive trees quilted with fireflies.
Hell.
I really enjoyed [b:Unteachable|20877902|Unteachable|Leah Raeder|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1395677357s/20877902.jpg|25207434], and I was really looking forward to Black Iris. But this prose is just too much for me right now. I know others whose reviews/opinions I respect find the prose beautiful, but I can't with this:
Listening to her banter with Armin was like standing between two ballet dancers in a gunfight. They circled each other elegantly, feinting, pirouetting, setting up the fatal shot, and Blythe was usually the one to fire it point-blank to Armin's chest. He accepted his wounds with a gentleman's grace, and the dance resumed. I sank into the seat and let their voices hum on my skin.
My first reaction to the writing was that it sounded so much like a young author playing with words, trying to make something mean so much more than it is -- and you get a little bit of that when Laney talks about writing about herself, Blythe, and Armin.
I was staring at that rose-lipped mouth, then into his eyes, a clear reddish-brown like carnelian, speckled with tiny flaws of amber and copper where the light caught.
Fuck. They're brown. His eyes are fucking brown, okay? Stop being a terrible writer, Laney.
But lampshading the prose doesn't make it any easier to swallow, especially when the lines between what is real and what is Laney's story blur -- and blur even further when there's a pointed discussion in Laney's writing class about unreliable narrators.
It's frustrating.
We sat on a curb in a pool of warm whiskey streetlight.
Does the terrible thing Laney alludes to actually happen? How does the utterly fucked up relationship between Laney, Armin, and Blythe shake out? Does the purple prose come from the fact that it's all just a story that Laney's writing?
The more I read, the less I cared about these questions. So I made a choice.
Rain hovered midair in a diamond-flecked veil.
Hell.
I really enjoyed [b:Unteachable|20877902|Unteachable|Leah Raeder|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1395677357s/20877902.jpg|25207434], and I was really looking forward to Black Iris. But this prose is just too much for me right now. I know others whose reviews/opinions I respect find the prose beautiful, but I can't with this:
Listening to her banter with Armin was like standing between two ballet dancers in a gunfight. They circled each other elegantly, feinting, pirouetting, setting up the fatal shot, and Blythe was usually the one to fire it point-blank to Armin's chest. He accepted his wounds with a gentleman's grace, and the dance resumed. I sank into the seat and let their voices hum on my skin.
My first reaction to the writing was that it sounded so much like a young author playing with words, trying to make something mean so much more than it is -- and you get a little bit of that when Laney talks about writing about herself, Blythe, and Armin.
I was staring at that rose-lipped mouth, then into his eyes, a clear reddish-brown like carnelian, speckled with tiny flaws of amber and copper where the light caught.
Fuck. They're brown. His eyes are fucking brown, okay? Stop being a terrible writer, Laney.
But lampshading the prose doesn't make it any easier to swallow, especially when the lines between what is real and what is Laney's story blur -- and blur even further when there's a pointed discussion in Laney's writing class about unreliable narrators.
It's frustrating.
We sat on a curb in a pool of warm whiskey streetlight.
Does the terrible thing Laney alludes to actually happen? How does the utterly fucked up relationship between Laney, Armin, and Blythe shake out? Does the purple prose come from the fact that it's all just a story that Laney's writing?
The more I read, the less I cared about these questions. So I made a choice.
Rain hovered midair in a diamond-flecked veil.