A review by _solaris
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

2.0

im not sure about this book - i think it gets a lot of flak because it's written so... messily? the way it jumps from topic to topic to character to character and you get sort of confused on what's happening. and the grammar is like a child's, and the author hardly uses commas, quotation marks - so you don't know whether someone's talking or the author's narrating.

basing off the introduction, it's like the author's just trying to be different and deep and to be honest, im just not into it. the vignettes are too short to properly appreciate and you realize you don't actually care about esperanza. not because of anything she does, but because you hardly know her, and all the stories don't build up this character you get to know and love.

there are so many parallels to "a tree grows in brooklyn" - one of my favorite books, so i think that's why this book grows on me... for a little. and then it's back to thinking that this book is trying way too hard.

for a really short book, this sure took a while to finish, huhu. the bit that resonated with me was only the end - which still doesn't make up for the beginning and the middle.