armedaphrodite 's review for:

The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach

3.75

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

---

I loved much about this book. Each chapter follows a new character with a new drive, but it picks up elements of the previous chapter (or sometimes chapters well back) – characters, themes, events – that creates a plot as much as it creates the story. “Weaves” it together in a way I’d call a tapestry if it wasn’t obviously mean to mimic the hair carpets the story focuses on. The language itself helps with that, and it was effective to the point I wouldn’t have known this was a work in translation save for the foreward. 

Given we don’t spend much time with any given character, they can at times be two-dimensional. But even when not given much space, they (often) feel vibrant. Each chapter feels like its own short story, with a character faced with one big choice or pressure; either they change as a result, or stare it down and do not. It draws good attention on questions about who we are, what makes us who we are, and how we change. And it builds so effectively, starting small, building out to an epic scale still told through human stories, and ending with a gut punch that feels so hollow and yet sticks. I think that last chapter might have been done differently, perhaps better, but the actual revelations in it are exactly what the author hoped. 

However, the book doesn’t quite get over the hump with its core. It has an obvious bone to pick with organized religion, though I could see it being interpreted as focusing on totalitarianism given the German origin and some revelations later on in the text. Regardless, the book doesn’t introduce much nuance in these specific themes (though there is some in other areas). A book doesn’t need nuance to be good, and I don’t think Eschbach wanted it here, but the result is that I don’t think the book is going to change someone’s mind. If you come in with a negative or lukewarm view of religion, this book might feel profound. If you have a positive view of religion, you’ll probably wonder where the discussion of positive aspects of religion are in the book, and be turned off by a discussion that doesn’t reflect your experience. 

Throw in a surprisingly regressive view of women for a book originally published in 1995 (Sexuality, regressive societies, sexual assault, I’m fine with those in a book. It’s when every female viewpoint character’s drive is about wanting a man, thinking about themselves sexually, it feels very #menwritingwomen) and the book wasn’t a knockout. But well worth a read, and puts the “novel” in novelty.