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A review by nvblue
The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris
1.0
This book certainly did not live up to, and does not deserve the hype it has received. I made it a little over a 1/3 of the way through the book, but I simply could not stomach any more of the overburdened, (and in reference to the excessive amount of food metaphors in the book) well-done, and excessive prose. In creating a book in which every sentence is a sumptuous and complex work of art, the lack of dialogue between the characters becomes starkly apparent.
Each conversation between the characters followed the same template:
1: A paragraph or two explaining why the character didn't want to talk to the other person.
2: Two or three lines of conversation.
3: Several paragraphs of extraneous flashbacks.
4: Another line or two of conversation.
5: A remark that the conversation was long and exhausting. When you read the dialogue, the conversation would have taken less than a minute.
I was excited to read this book, in part because of its same-sex relationship. This was woefully disappointing. Perhaps it got better at the end, but another physically and emotionally abusive, sadomasochistic, and to be quite frank, stereotyped gay relationship was simply uninteresting and unnecessary.
Each conversation between the characters followed the same template:
1: A paragraph or two explaining why the character didn't want to talk to the other person.
2: Two or three lines of conversation.
3: Several paragraphs of extraneous flashbacks.
4: Another line or two of conversation.
5: A remark that the conversation was long and exhausting. When you read the dialogue, the conversation would have taken less than a minute.
I was excited to read this book, in part because of its same-sex relationship. This was woefully disappointing. Perhaps it got better at the end, but another physically and emotionally abusive, sadomasochistic, and to be quite frank, stereotyped gay relationship was simply uninteresting and unnecessary.