Scan barcode
A review by kerri_reads
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
1.0
This was a tedious read. I thought I'd never finish it!
There's no shame in DNFing a book you're not enjoying, but it was on my 100 Books To Read In A Lifetime list, so I powered through.
The book mostly follows our narrator Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, a charismatic free-spirited maverick who epitomises the "beat generation", as they travel the country on a series of road trips in a quest for knowledge and exerience (#wanderlust).
Being a travelogue based largely on the author's real life experiences, there's no real plot as such and after a while it starts to become immensely repetitive. Also, as it was published in 1957, this novel has some unenlightened views, casual homophobia, racism and misogyny.
I get that the novel was important at the time as a portrait of a rebellious youth culture, a story about the search for something meaningful to hold on to. However, just because a book is important doesn't mean it's good.
This one wasn't for me.
There's no shame in DNFing a book you're not enjoying, but it was on my 100 Books To Read In A Lifetime list, so I powered through.
The book mostly follows our narrator Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, a charismatic free-spirited maverick who epitomises the "beat generation", as they travel the country on a series of road trips in a quest for knowledge and exerience (#wanderlust).
Being a travelogue based largely on the author's real life experiences, there's no real plot as such and after a while it starts to become immensely repetitive. Also, as it was published in 1957, this novel has some unenlightened views, casual homophobia, racism and misogyny.
I get that the novel was important at the time as a portrait of a rebellious youth culture, a story about the search for something meaningful to hold on to. However, just because a book is important doesn't mean it's good.
This one wasn't for me.