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A review by juliwi
Landfalls by Naomi J. Williams
4.0
Landfalls is a novel that had me on the edge of doubt until the moment I started reading it. Was this a book for me? Would I be as gripped by it as I was hoping to be? It turned out that I didn't have to worry at all because Williams had me right where she wanted me after the first few chapters. Thanks to Little, Brown and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange of an honest review.
Multiple-person narratives can be either the best thing for a novel or can be incredibly detrimental to understanding the actual plot of the novel. Each of the characters allowed to speak has to actually add something to the story or else they only serve as a distraction to the reader. Williams takes it one step further in Landfalls and also has different chapters and narrators write in different mediums. You see everything in Landfalls, from straight up first-person narration to seemingly dramatized incident reports. And the best thing is that it all works. Williams weaves all of these different stories, points of view and mediums together into a single, whole story, illuminating the story of a single voyage. Through her switching in narratives, which remains largely chronological, Williams very much makes the reader a part of the exploring party while also giving the reader the chance to try to figure out for themselves what happened to Lapérouse and his crew.
I absolutely loved Landfalls and it is a novel I will no doubt be rereading. This may not sound like a compliment but there aren't a lot of contemporary novels which I feel that need with. I'd recommend this to fans of adventure novels and aren't afraid of novels that switch it up a bit.
For the full review: http://universeinwords.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/review-landfalls-by-naomi-j-williams.html
Multiple-person narratives can be either the best thing for a novel or can be incredibly detrimental to understanding the actual plot of the novel. Each of the characters allowed to speak has to actually add something to the story or else they only serve as a distraction to the reader. Williams takes it one step further in Landfalls and also has different chapters and narrators write in different mediums. You see everything in Landfalls, from straight up first-person narration to seemingly dramatized incident reports. And the best thing is that it all works. Williams weaves all of these different stories, points of view and mediums together into a single, whole story, illuminating the story of a single voyage. Through her switching in narratives, which remains largely chronological, Williams very much makes the reader a part of the exploring party while also giving the reader the chance to try to figure out for themselves what happened to Lapérouse and his crew.
I absolutely loved Landfalls and it is a novel I will no doubt be rereading. This may not sound like a compliment but there aren't a lot of contemporary novels which I feel that need with. I'd recommend this to fans of adventure novels and aren't afraid of novels that switch it up a bit.
For the full review: http://universeinwords.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/review-landfalls-by-naomi-j-williams.html