A review by countessjess
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

4.0

It took me a while to get through this book. I listened to it as an audiobook, and the narration by Dan John Miller is brilliant and expressive. The book itself is quite slow. It starts off with Clyde Griffiths as a young lad, and chronicles his life. Like I said, this account of Clyde’s life is a slow one, but once I was into the final quarter of this book I sort of understood why. It’s hard to explain without giving anything away, but having all that back story, essentially the knowledge of Clyde’s entire life since he was old enough to begin thinking for himself and making his own decisions, really adds something to the book that I think makes it stand out from others that just include the events of the last half of the book. So yeah, it was slow, it was a bit of a trial to read at times, but it was worth it in the end.

It’s hard to say what I think of Clyde himself. I go through a range of feelings regarding him, starting with sympathy and ending in sympathy, with frustration, strong dislike, and confusion mixed in there. This book focuses very well on him, and he is a very well fleshed out character by the end.

I can’t really think of anything else to say about this without giving away what happens at the end, so I’m going to leave it there. Overall, I think it was a pretty good book.