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A review by vayolet
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott
2.0
Between a 2 and a 3 (have been changing it while I wrote this).
Although I appreciate it is an original and interesting premise, I cannot give much else to the credit of this book. It's boring, not particularly engaging, not very well written (I mean, it is OK), the maths are relatively fun, but that's about it. I feel like most of the reviews I read say it is not particularly interesting as literature goes but "for us maths enthusiasts is great". Erhm, no. As a mathematician myself I am highly unimpressed (not that I needed any degrees for my opinion to be legitimate, but just adding myself to the sample data of detractors).
I am also highly sceptical of this "social satire" side that people claim this book has. The only acknowledgement of this satire comes from the edited second edition where Abbott had to clarify that he's not a misogynistic twat. At no point I feel he's doing any criticism or even hinting at these extremely classist and misogynistic views being bad. The narrator, a quite dumb Square that cannot even extrapolate his own logical thinking onto himself after lecturing the King of Lineland, is all the way in to this hierarchical and discriminatory society to the point of euthanasia.
All in all, it was kind of interesting reading it, I would not re-read it, I would barely recommend as a read as it didn't really give me any interesting insights that I think are worth passing on.
Although I appreciate it is an original and interesting premise, I cannot give much else to the credit of this book. It's boring, not particularly engaging, not very well written (I mean, it is OK), the maths are relatively fun, but that's about it. I feel like most of the reviews I read say it is not particularly interesting as literature goes but "for us maths enthusiasts is great". Erhm, no. As a mathematician myself I am highly unimpressed (not that I needed any degrees for my opinion to be legitimate, but just adding myself to the sample data of detractors).
I am also highly sceptical of this "social satire" side that people claim this book has. The only acknowledgement of this satire comes from the edited second edition where Abbott had to clarify that he's not a misogynistic twat. At no point I feel he's doing any criticism or even hinting at these extremely classist and misogynistic views being bad. The narrator, a quite dumb Square that cannot even extrapolate his own logical thinking onto himself after lecturing the King of Lineland, is all the way in to this hierarchical and discriminatory society to the point of euthanasia.
All in all, it was kind of interesting reading it, I would not re-read it, I would barely recommend as a read as it didn't really give me any interesting insights that I think are worth passing on.