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A review by njdarkish
Audition by Ralph McCarthy, Ralph McCarthy, Ryū Murakami, Ryū Murakami
3.0
I really enjoyed about 80% of this book-- it was building suspense in exciting ways, and the prose was interesting and beautiful. The characters really came to life.
But the last 20% failed to deliver on the promises of the first 80%-- early in the novel it promises us unimaginable nightmares to follow, but instead we get a chapter or two of the infamous attack/torture scene (not really a big spoiler, I imagine almost everybody who picks up this book is aware of that) that tells us the villain's motivations without any subtlety and then everything gets tied up in a pretty neat bow with no denouement. Disappointing, when the build-up was so good. It honestly felt like the author got tired of writing this story so they just banged out the ending as quickly as possible so they wouldn't have to write this book any more. I've heard much better things about how the film version delivers on the ending, so I'll have to check that out sooner than later.
But the last 20% failed to deliver on the promises of the first 80%-- early in the novel it promises us unimaginable nightmares to follow, but instead we get a chapter or two of the infamous attack/torture scene (not really a big spoiler, I imagine almost everybody who picks up this book is aware of that) that tells us the villain's motivations without any subtlety and then everything gets tied up in a pretty neat bow with no denouement. Disappointing, when the build-up was so good. It honestly felt like the author got tired of writing this story so they just banged out the ending as quickly as possible so they wouldn't have to write this book any more. I've heard much better things about how the film version delivers on the ending, so I'll have to check that out sooner than later.