A review by matthewwester
The Seducer's Diary by Edna Hatlestad Hong, Howard Vincent Hong, Søren Kierkegaard

1.0

I rarely get so excited to read a book. How could it not be brilliant? It's a philosopher I thoroughly enjoy (Fear and Trembling, for example, is brilliant), writing about a subject that's always intriguing (young love gone wrong), with an approach that is sure to be complicated and thoughtful (trying to make himself look like the bad guy). Honestly, I've been fascinated by Kierkegaard and Olsen's relationship since I first heard a summary of their lives.

So I can't begin to describe the disappointment I felt in reading this. It takes dozens of pages for any advancement of plot to take place (for instance, it takes 50 pages just for the main character to learn her name is Cordelia). The style is dense (which encourages you to read slower) but then the content is mostly whiny drivel; small unimportant details are expanded into multiple paragraphs of rhetorical questions and the metaphors center around cliche images and language. In the last 40 pages there are a few rare moments of philosophical musing, but mostly it feels like the journal entries of an unusually intelligent pre-teen.

I am glad so many other reviewers seemed to enjoy this book. As for me, I just don't see the appeal.