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A review by thehelenaiad
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
5.0
In all actuality, I’m between 4 and 5 stars for this book!
I don’t think words can be adequately used to describe the emotional whirlwind I went through alongside these characters! I’m heartbroken, so in love, furious, and essentially every other emotion at once.
The characters written in this book, with their immaculate ambiguity as gifted by James Baldwin are characters I hate to love and YET simultaneously love to hate!
The way time is played around to give you a feeling of dread stretched until the very moment it clicks and everything comes together was truly captivating and made me unable to set this book down.
As for some of the content/themes presented in the book:
Given the time period in which this was written, I think the themes tackled were done so with such excellence and yet such a blunt nature that today they may seem malignant in a way.
I don’t believe this was the true intent of Baldwin’s writing, as characters within the story show their true colors through their misogyny (and internalized homophobia). These characteristics/character flaws made the characters feel all the more real for the period and thus the story.
This book blew me away with so many aspects yet kept me crawling back for more! It is definitely going onto my reread list so I can annotate and catch all the beautiful writing I missed in the first time through.
I don’t think words can be adequately used to describe the emotional whirlwind I went through alongside these characters! I’m heartbroken, so in love, furious, and essentially every other emotion at once.
The characters written in this book, with their immaculate ambiguity as gifted by James Baldwin are characters I hate to love and YET simultaneously love to hate!
The way time is played around to give you a feeling of dread stretched until the very moment it clicks and everything comes together was truly captivating and made me unable to set this book down.
As for some of the content/themes presented in the book:
Given the time period in which this was written, I think the themes tackled were done so with such excellence and yet such a blunt nature that today they may seem malignant in a way.
I don’t believe this was the true intent of Baldwin’s writing, as characters within the story show their true colors through their misogyny (and internalized homophobia). These characteristics/character flaws made the characters feel all the more real for the period and thus the story.
This book blew me away with so many aspects yet kept me crawling back for more! It is definitely going onto my reread list so I can annotate and catch all the beautiful writing I missed in the first time through.