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A review by mynameismarines
The Crane Wife by Patrick Ness
4.0
"No one wanted to hear that people other than themselves might be complicated, that no one was ever just one thing, no history ever just one version."
This review can really only start in one place: I love Patric Ness and count some of his books amongst my favorite things I've read in my lifetime. He's incredibly talented and after having read The Crane Wife, I can think no different.
I do feel like if you've love some of Ness' other work, you might find this too different to enjoy. The prose is flowery and less subtle that what you would find in [b:A Monster Calls|8621462|A Monster Calls|Patrick Ness|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1387584864s/8621462.jpg|13492114]. The plot is less thrilling and fast paced than what you would find in The Chaos Walking Trilogy. The best comparison would probably be to [b:More Than This|21969786|More Than This|Patrick Ness|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1398164413s/21969786.jpg|22008332], but even that felt more philosophical than what we find here. It's a simple message here, about the effect of love, of loving with passion, of forgiving and selflessness and the never ending nature of stories and of how everyone's perspective changes a story.
These are all things that are clearly laid out within the story for us. If you want to pour over a story and guess what the author means, this isn't the story for you. Each of the characters take their temperature, so to speak, and the narration does the heavy lifting for us. Even the main character George is repeatedly called nice and yielding to a point where it might be considered repetitive.
It was easy for me to forgive that in the writing however because of how much I loved George and Amanda. I couldn't tell you what it was about them specifically that endeared me to them, but so many times I felt like I wanted to climb into the pages and squeeze them. The whole atmosphere created by the story was so tangible. I'm not sure if you've ever experience a story where the feel and flow of it stand out to you like an element, even apart from plot and characters. I think of what I remember and I vividly remember how I felt while reading it and how much it embodies that air of folk and fairytale.
Even though it ends on a positive uptick, my heart hurt for George at the end. And even though this wasn't my favorite Ness book, it is one I would like to revisit, especially to reread the story of the crane and the volcano, which I think I would appreciate more the second time around.
This review can really only start in one place: I love Patric Ness and count some of his books amongst my favorite things I've read in my lifetime. He's incredibly talented and after having read The Crane Wife, I can think no different.
I do feel like if you've love some of Ness' other work, you might find this too different to enjoy. The prose is flowery and less subtle that what you would find in [b:A Monster Calls|8621462|A Monster Calls|Patrick Ness|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1387584864s/8621462.jpg|13492114]. The plot is less thrilling and fast paced than what you would find in The Chaos Walking Trilogy. The best comparison would probably be to [b:More Than This|21969786|More Than This|Patrick Ness|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1398164413s/21969786.jpg|22008332], but even that felt more philosophical than what we find here. It's a simple message here, about the effect of love, of loving with passion, of forgiving and selflessness and the never ending nature of stories and of how everyone's perspective changes a story.
These are all things that are clearly laid out within the story for us. If you want to pour over a story and guess what the author means, this isn't the story for you. Each of the characters take their temperature, so to speak, and the narration does the heavy lifting for us. Even the main character George is repeatedly called nice and yielding to a point where it might be considered repetitive.
It was easy for me to forgive that in the writing however because of how much I loved George and Amanda. I couldn't tell you what it was about them specifically that endeared me to them, but so many times I felt like I wanted to climb into the pages and squeeze them. The whole atmosphere created by the story was so tangible. I'm not sure if you've ever experience a story where the feel and flow of it stand out to you like an element, even apart from plot and characters. I think of what I remember and I vividly remember how I felt while reading it and how much it embodies that air of folk and fairytale.
Even though it ends on a positive uptick, my heart hurt for George at the end. And even though this wasn't my favorite Ness book, it is one I would like to revisit, especially to reread the story of the crane and the volcano, which I think I would appreciate more the second time around.