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okayantigone 's review for:
Mountains Beyond Mountains
by Tracy Kidder
Reading this book was physically painful. Turning each page felt like pulling teeth. Every moment spent reading I could literally feel the time being wasted and trickling away from me never to return. The information I received from reading the Wiki page on Paul Farmer was a lot more useful, entertaining and valuable.
Reading roughly three hundred pages of Kidder patting himself on the back for his acquaintance with what is frankly a great man felt sickening and boring. The problems which should have been in focus of the novel (the poverty in Haiti, the ways in which sickness can be battered) were somehow pushed to the side in favor of recounting Kidder's own perceptions of Farmer as a misunderstood tragic hero.
I failed to recognise the novel as belonging to a particular genre - was this a travelogue? a biography? It felt to me merely as Kidder enjoying an unjustified ego trip over the fact that he is, in theory, doing soemthing to help, while in reality he is merely riding the coat-tails of a true activist.
As far as raising awareness goes, if one were to use only Kidder's book as a resource, they are more certain to be disgusted and turn their back away on the cause, than to pay any attention to it.
In addition to a bland, repetitive style of writing, and a dry personal sentiment of self-complaisant petty satisfaction, Kidder's patronising, diminutive tone in regard to Haitians, Peruvians and impoverished patients in general is almost accusatory, and quite painful to go through.
Would not recommend to anyone.
Reading roughly three hundred pages of Kidder patting himself on the back for his acquaintance with what is frankly a great man felt sickening and boring. The problems which should have been in focus of the novel (the poverty in Haiti, the ways in which sickness can be battered) were somehow pushed to the side in favor of recounting Kidder's own perceptions of Farmer as a misunderstood tragic hero.
I failed to recognise the novel as belonging to a particular genre - was this a travelogue? a biography? It felt to me merely as Kidder enjoying an unjustified ego trip over the fact that he is, in theory, doing soemthing to help, while in reality he is merely riding the coat-tails of a true activist.
As far as raising awareness goes, if one were to use only Kidder's book as a resource, they are more certain to be disgusted and turn their back away on the cause, than to pay any attention to it.
In addition to a bland, repetitive style of writing, and a dry personal sentiment of self-complaisant petty satisfaction, Kidder's patronising, diminutive tone in regard to Haitians, Peruvians and impoverished patients in general is almost accusatory, and quite painful to go through.
Would not recommend to anyone.