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charliedezeeuw 's review for:
The Last White Man
by Mohsin Hamid
I have mixed feelings. I’m giving it a 2,5 for this reason. Whilst I liked the idea so very much, the execution made me believe the author was quite…well racist. I had to actively look up what the message was, and the inspiration, to be able to understand the viewpoint. There was so much speak of anger, of violence, of suicide due to the change of skincolour. Such negative ideas attached to the notion that everyone in the world is turning dark skinned. That first interpretation was very confusing, and made me almost sad that someone believes this would be the outcome.
Now that I know it is kafkaesque and meant to ridicule racist ideas and fears, I can appreciate it a bit more. It still fell a little flat for me.
I enjoyed the relationship dynamics changing. The idea of suddenly dating a person of colour, or being perceived differently by strangers or old friends. And the relationship between Oona and her racist mum was interesting to watch untangle itself. I wanted the mum to fully change perspective, and seeing her struggle with her own transformation was satisfying at least.
I believe this to be one of those artistic “not much happens but there are pretty lines and also death and sex so its literature” kind of books. It was not my cup of tea. More my cup of oatmilk. Just a little bland and lacking.
Favorite lines:
“You’re so beautiful,” her mother said as she was leaving. “You should get a gun.”
“Anders’s pale father was the only pale person present, the only pale person left in the entire town, for there were by that point no others, and then his casket was closed and his burial was occurring and he was committed to the soil, the last white man, and after that, after him, there were none.”
“being better able to tell one dark person from another, for seeing finer gradations in the texture of someone’s skin and the shape of their cheekbones and the nature of their hair, like people were suddenly trees, all trees, and no one was anything else, and it was possible to distinguish one from the other by their branches and their bark and their leaves and their height, but not to the extent of one seeming to be a tree and the other seeming to belong to a different category of plant, a moss, say, or a fern.”
Lines that summarise the motivator and idea of the book well:
“his boss looked him over and said, “I would have killed myself.”
Anders shrugged, unsure how to reply, and his boss added, “If it was me.”
“assumed to be an act of home defense, the dark body lying there an intruder, shot with his own gun after a struggle, but the homeowner was not present, and was nowhere to be found,”
“for to be seen as a threat, as dark as he was, was to risk one day being obliterated.”
“he did not know if those who seemed most hidden in themselves, their postures turned inwards, their faces shrouded, if that was a dark-person thing, what dark people had long done, or if it was a sign instead of a person who had become dark, and was concealing themselves, as he too had first tried to do, ”
Now that I know it is kafkaesque and meant to ridicule racist ideas and fears, I can appreciate it a bit more. It still fell a little flat for me.
I enjoyed the relationship dynamics changing. The idea of suddenly dating a person of colour, or being perceived differently by strangers or old friends. And the relationship between Oona and her racist mum was interesting to watch untangle itself. I wanted the mum to fully change perspective, and seeing her struggle with her own transformation was satisfying at least.
I believe this to be one of those artistic “not much happens but there are pretty lines and also death and sex so its literature” kind of books. It was not my cup of tea. More my cup of oatmilk. Just a little bland and lacking.
Favorite lines:
“You’re so beautiful,” her mother said as she was leaving. “You should get a gun.”
“Anders’s pale father was the only pale person present, the only pale person left in the entire town, for there were by that point no others, and then his casket was closed and his burial was occurring and he was committed to the soil, the last white man, and after that, after him, there were none.”
“being better able to tell one dark person from another, for seeing finer gradations in the texture of someone’s skin and the shape of their cheekbones and the nature of their hair, like people were suddenly trees, all trees, and no one was anything else, and it was possible to distinguish one from the other by their branches and their bark and their leaves and their height, but not to the extent of one seeming to be a tree and the other seeming to belong to a different category of plant, a moss, say, or a fern.”
Lines that summarise the motivator and idea of the book well:
“his boss looked him over and said, “I would have killed myself.”
Anders shrugged, unsure how to reply, and his boss added, “If it was me.”
“assumed to be an act of home defense, the dark body lying there an intruder, shot with his own gun after a struggle, but the homeowner was not present, and was nowhere to be found,”
“for to be seen as a threat, as dark as he was, was to risk one day being obliterated.”
“he did not know if those who seemed most hidden in themselves, their postures turned inwards, their faces shrouded, if that was a dark-person thing, what dark people had long done, or if it was a sign instead of a person who had become dark, and was concealing themselves, as he too had first tried to do, ”