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carissatheluca 's review for:
Oval
by Elvia Wilk
Oval is…. not good.
This is one of the best examples of a great author who just does not know how plot works. Wilk has absolutely astounding prose but there is no reasonable perspective organization in Oval and the pill THE ENTIRE BOOK IS NAMED FOR exclusively exists off-page. It wasn’t even introduced until quite literally halfway into the novel and then Anja spends more time philosophizing about it than telling us what in the hell is going on around her. There is no end to the repetitive soliloquies. The first 150 pages are genuinely the same three chapters rewritten at a slightly different shitty party. The characters have no growth. Louis exists more tangibly in flashback than during the events of the novel- hilarious considering he was the only character doing anything worth writing a book about. Anja isn’t even PRESENT for the finale; she gets second-hand slop information and guessworks the meaning of it. There is no resolution because there was no conflict. There was never any motivation for the book to continue but Anja’s endless, unresolved, irritating anxiety spirals. The “magic,” the “science,” of the book, does not exist for us to read. Anja merely echoes her feelings about it to us with no real description of ANYTHING. She never talks to anyone, not properly. She never confronts anyone. She is not protagonist material. She’s, at best, a decent contender for an example of debilitating social anxiety and insecurity. Or just another whiny rich girl to make fun of.
I WOULD give Oval one star but the sentences themselves were brilliantly composed. Not really brilliantly enough to make up for the lack of any feasible entertainment, but so it goes.
edit: After perusing some other reviews, I realized this was meant to be dystopian. This may be a result of reading a pre-covid novel post-pandemic (sort of), but I hardly got the sense that it was even ATTEMPTING to be dystopian- which is minutely embarrassing for me considering some of the blatantly dystopian elements (functions of artists and consultants, for example). Regardless, it completely failed to give me a sense of any “pushed” boundaries. The world Wilk created isn’t nearly subversive (or compelling) enough for me to even try to call it dystopian. More like a very privileged person’s idea of what oppression they haven’t experienced would look like if it were worse. It is already worse than this, Wilk.
This is one of the best examples of a great author who just does not know how plot works. Wilk has absolutely astounding prose but there is no reasonable perspective organization in Oval and the pill THE ENTIRE BOOK IS NAMED FOR exclusively exists off-page. It wasn’t even introduced until quite literally halfway into the novel and then Anja spends more time philosophizing about it than telling us what in the hell is going on around her. There is no end to the repetitive soliloquies. The first 150 pages are genuinely the same three chapters rewritten at a slightly different shitty party. The characters have no growth. Louis exists more tangibly in flashback than during the events of the novel- hilarious considering he was the only character doing anything worth writing a book about. Anja isn’t even PRESENT for the finale; she gets second-hand slop information and guessworks the meaning of it. There is no resolution because there was no conflict. There was never any motivation for the book to continue but Anja’s endless, unresolved, irritating anxiety spirals. The “magic,” the “science,” of the book, does not exist for us to read. Anja merely echoes her feelings about it to us with no real description of ANYTHING. She never talks to anyone, not properly. She never confronts anyone. She is not protagonist material. She’s, at best, a decent contender for an example of debilitating social anxiety and insecurity. Or just another whiny rich girl to make fun of.
I WOULD give Oval one star but the sentences themselves were brilliantly composed. Not really brilliantly enough to make up for the lack of any feasible entertainment, but so it goes.
edit: After perusing some other reviews, I realized this was meant to be dystopian. This may be a result of reading a pre-covid novel post-pandemic (sort of), but I hardly got the sense that it was even ATTEMPTING to be dystopian- which is minutely embarrassing for me considering some of the blatantly dystopian elements (functions of artists and consultants, for example). Regardless, it completely failed to give me a sense of any “pushed” boundaries. The world Wilk created isn’t nearly subversive (or compelling) enough for me to even try to call it dystopian. More like a very privileged person’s idea of what oppression they haven’t experienced would look like if it were worse. It is already worse than this, Wilk.