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A review by carduelia_carduelis
The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat
Did not finish book.
This is a very short book but I read three of the 9 short chapters and was underwhelmed, so decided to stop reading.
The one positive from this reading experience is that it made me go look up the Haitian Tonton Macoutes, which weren't a group of people I'd heard of. Very little is taught in Britain about the histories of places outside of Europe.
However, the book itself I found to be largely dull. The opening story seems to be lauded on GR as the strongest, but I was astounded with how unrealistic the characters felt. The daughter, a grown woman, laughs off her father destroying a piece of art she's sold to a prominent buyer and then goes and leads on the celebrity buyer anyway... None of this felt like real life, like these were actual people interacting as opposed to constructs to illustrate, heavy-handedly, the secret life of someone's dad.
Chapter two was also pretty tough going but for a different reason, the characters were caricatures: the mean white lady-landlord, the blokes in their gross apartment with naked women on the walls, the cheating husband, the cheating wife, the ignorant foreigner somehow totally surprised by customs..
It was painful... nothing felt original, nothing made me want to read further.
From reading other people's reviews, I'm perplexed that they read a gripping portrayal of a man coming to terms with being a murderer and the story of a second generation american with Haitian parents. Because that sounds like a book I'd want to read, not whatever Danticat wrote here.
The one positive from this reading experience is that it made me go look up the Haitian Tonton Macoutes, which weren't a group of people I'd heard of. Very little is taught in Britain about the histories of places outside of Europe.
However, the book itself I found to be largely dull. The opening story seems to be lauded on GR as the strongest, but I was astounded with how unrealistic the characters felt. The daughter, a grown woman, laughs off her father destroying a piece of art she's sold to a prominent buyer and then goes and leads on the celebrity buyer anyway... None of this felt like real life, like these were actual people interacting as opposed to constructs to illustrate, heavy-handedly, the secret life of someone's dad.
Chapter two was also pretty tough going but for a different reason, the characters were caricatures: the mean white lady-landlord, the blokes in their gross apartment with naked women on the walls, the cheating husband, the cheating wife, the ignorant foreigner somehow totally surprised by customs..
It was painful... nothing felt original, nothing made me want to read further.
From reading other people's reviews, I'm perplexed that they read a gripping portrayal of a man coming to terms with being a murderer and the story of a second generation american with Haitian parents. Because that sounds like a book I'd want to read, not whatever Danticat wrote here.