A review by cmadrenas
Ludmila's Broken English by D.B.C. Pierre

3.0

Vernon God Little’s a solid favourite but this one wasn’t as good. I think of it kind of as a way better version of Chris Cleave’s Little Bee. Everywhere Little Bee did the Brit-meets-global-South thing wrong (overplayed third-world naivety & ignorance, “struggling” non-white characters with “pasts” who are portrayed as morally flawless, Product (RED) style WASPishness, etc.: the usual stuff really) Ludmila’s Broken English didn’t entirely fuck up. Though it came close, at times. Ludmila’s beautiful-ness was awkwardly overemphasized, and the treatment of disability w/r/t the twins was a little messed up at times… but overall not too horrible. I liked it, I couldn’t not like it, even when certain pages contained upwards of six bad figures of speech for “so-and-so looked at so-and-so” (lots of eyes being “hung on” or “thrown at” people).