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A review by lizshayne
Galápagos Regained by James Morrow
3.0
I think the 3 stars is a bit generous, although the last 25 pages or so were significantly better. Probably because of the characters present.
This was a very silly book--good silly, but silly nonetheless. It read like a pastiche of a Victorian novel and the characters and completely improbable events that were always greeted with an erudite witticism only added to that element. I liked the silliness.
But silliness has to be balanced with depth. You can't take me on a 450 page adventure and provide with me characters who lack any real emotional depth. It took until the last ten pages before I was reasonably convinced that any characters was actually experiencing feelings and, in the meantime, the narrative had provided five marriage proposals and three conversions, both towards and away from religion. If you're writing a story about evolution and belief - even a very silly story - you HAVE to convince me that faith and its loss are real. No one will ever be Terry Pratchett again, but Pratchett's novels are the ideal example of mixing brilliant absurdity, trenchant critique, and characters whose emotions are palpable.
THese characters just...sat there on the page. With the exception of Charles Darwin, I found the idea that any of them had real inner feelings to impossible and that took most of the bite out of the theological wrangling and the perils of the journey. I would have enjoyed this story so much more if the ridiculousness had a bit more heft.
(It occurs to me that the novel might not mean to be ridiculous. I hope it did mean to be. I would feel very bad if it wanted to be taken seriously, because nope! So not happening.)
This was a very silly book--good silly, but silly nonetheless. It read like a pastiche of a Victorian novel and the characters and completely improbable events that were always greeted with an erudite witticism only added to that element. I liked the silliness.
But silliness has to be balanced with depth. You can't take me on a 450 page adventure and provide with me characters who lack any real emotional depth. It took until the last ten pages before I was reasonably convinced that any characters was actually experiencing feelings and, in the meantime, the narrative had provided five marriage proposals and three conversions, both towards and away from religion. If you're writing a story about evolution and belief - even a very silly story - you HAVE to convince me that faith and its loss are real. No one will ever be Terry Pratchett again, but Pratchett's novels are the ideal example of mixing brilliant absurdity, trenchant critique, and characters whose emotions are palpable.
THese characters just...sat there on the page. With the exception of Charles Darwin, I found the idea that any of them had real inner feelings to impossible and that took most of the bite out of the theological wrangling and the perils of the journey. I would have enjoyed this story so much more if the ridiculousness had a bit more heft.
(It occurs to me that the novel might not mean to be ridiculous. I hope it did mean to be. I would feel very bad if it wanted to be taken seriously, because nope! So not happening.)