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ladydewinter 's review for:
Tell the Wolves I'm Home
by Carol Rifka Brunt
Do you ever read a book and think you’re reading a different version than everybody else because everybody else loved it and you cannot fathom why? This was such a book.
My main problem is that I didn’t believe a word of it. Yes, it is fiction, but even fiction you have to believe while you’re reading it, right? It just felt... I honestly think the best word for it is a German one, hanebüchen, outlandish and absurd. June didn’t sound like a teenager to me, and the events were so obviously events that might take place in a novel rather than in real life it made me roll my eyes a lot. In fact, if it weren’t the case that I always read way too many books at once, and I didn’t gave that problem with any of the other books, I would have been afraid something was wrong with me.
I’m also not a fan of how AIDS was treated in the book. I’ve read five books dealing with AIDS this that were released in the last couple years (i.e. not during the height of the crisis), and while one was excellent and two very good, I had to stop reading one because it was treated like...some kind of prop and gotcha, or lack of a better expression. And this had a similar feeling to it. Part of it might be that I had such problems with June‘s POV, and her views are very much influenced by attitudes of the eighties, at least at first. But the ending made me angry, and while I was adjusting the rating from three to two stars as I went on, the ending is why I chose one star.
Spoilers, so read on at your peril.
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So at the end June asks Toby, who is dying from AIDS, for help and he rescues her sister heroically in the pouring rain and of course he gets really sick and then dies and seriously, wtf. Wtf.
My main problem is that I didn’t believe a word of it. Yes, it is fiction, but even fiction you have to believe while you’re reading it, right? It just felt... I honestly think the best word for it is a German one, hanebüchen, outlandish and absurd. June didn’t sound like a teenager to me, and the events were so obviously events that might take place in a novel rather than in real life it made me roll my eyes a lot. In fact, if it weren’t the case that I always read way too many books at once, and I didn’t gave that problem with any of the other books, I would have been afraid something was wrong with me.
I’m also not a fan of how AIDS was treated in the book. I’ve read five books dealing with AIDS this that were released in the last couple years (i.e. not during the height of the crisis), and while one was excellent and two very good, I had to stop reading one because it was treated like...some kind of prop and gotcha, or lack of a better expression. And this had a similar feeling to it. Part of it might be that I had such problems with June‘s POV, and her views are very much influenced by attitudes of the eighties, at least at first. But the ending made me angry, and while I was adjusting the rating from three to two stars as I went on, the ending is why I chose one star.
Spoilers, so read on at your peril.
*
*
*
*
*
*
So at the end June asks Toby, who is dying from AIDS, for help and he rescues her sister heroically in the pouring rain and of course he gets really sick and then dies and seriously, wtf. Wtf.