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A review by melbsreads
Unrest by Jesper Stein
2.5
Trigger warnings: death, murder, cheating, fire, drug use, violence.
I picked this up for $2 last year because I tend to really enjoy Scandinavian crime books and I try as much as possible to read books set outside the US and the UK so this definitely fit the bill. And then I put off reading it for over a year. Whoops?
Anyway. The mystery itself was pretty decent, but I feel like a lot of the story got bogged down in Axel's personal life in ways I didn't really care for. The descriptions of women were...not good. Exhibit A: "He looked at her naked body in the semi-darkness: her pussy, freshly shaved around the dark brown labia, the greasy pubic hair above it, her white skin, her hip sockets framing the skin on her stomach with the two stretch marks like barcodes on either side of her navel, which had turned outwards since Emma was born. Up and down went her breast in a calm rhythm; her nipples had crawled in on themselves."
Now, I don't know how most people describe the mother of their child, but I'm guessing it's not greasy pubes and inverted nipples. And sometime later, we get the following: "her tongue was hard and greedy, she tasted slightly sweet, of bolognese or ketchup". BOLOGNESE OR KETCHUP?!?!?! Ma'am. Brush your teeth please.
So while the mystery was fine, the rest was a big ol' nope. Especially once you add in my absolute least favourite description: "Corneliussen's mouth resembled a stitched-up chicken's anus".
I'm honestly not sure if this was a Book Problem or a Translation Problem but it was definitely a Problem For My Brain.
I picked this up for $2 last year because I tend to really enjoy Scandinavian crime books and I try as much as possible to read books set outside the US and the UK so this definitely fit the bill. And then I put off reading it for over a year. Whoops?
Anyway. The mystery itself was pretty decent, but I feel like a lot of the story got bogged down in Axel's personal life in ways I didn't really care for. The descriptions of women were...not good. Exhibit A: "He looked at her naked body in the semi-darkness: her pussy, freshly shaved around the dark brown labia, the greasy pubic hair above it, her white skin, her hip sockets framing the skin on her stomach with the two stretch marks like barcodes on either side of her navel, which had turned outwards since Emma was born. Up and down went her breast in a calm rhythm; her nipples had crawled in on themselves."
Now, I don't know how most people describe the mother of their child, but I'm guessing it's not greasy pubes and inverted nipples. And sometime later, we get the following: "her tongue was hard and greedy, she tasted slightly sweet, of bolognese or ketchup". BOLOGNESE OR KETCHUP?!?!?! Ma'am. Brush your teeth please.
So while the mystery was fine, the rest was a big ol' nope. Especially once you add in my absolute least favourite description: "Corneliussen's mouth resembled a stitched-up chicken's anus".
I'm honestly not sure if this was a Book Problem or a Translation Problem but it was definitely a Problem For My Brain.