Scan barcode
A review by nostradamusbuddy
Black Deutschland by Darryl Pinckney
4.0
Four stars because the prose is excellent and because of that alone I would read anything else Pinckney has written, but I'm actually lukewarm about the book overall.
The basic premise is that Jed goes to live with his estranged cousin in Berlin following a brief stint in rehab. There, he works for Rosen-Montag, an architect that hasn't ever really built anything. While in Berlin Jed shuffles through a myriad of bars, flings/hook-ups, and pseudo-relapses. The most interesting parts, for me, are the ones that dealt with his family in Chicago. The narrative in Chicago feels concrete and understandable, while the one in Berlin is disjointed and hazy at best, due in part to the novel's nonlinear structure. I also couldn't make sense of the whole architecture plot at all, which made for a frustrating reading experience.
Overall, the book is all over the place, but the prose (and the fact that I needed to write a coherent paper one this) kept me engaged through the end, even if I couldn't really make sense of the plot afterward.
The basic premise is that Jed goes to live with his estranged cousin in Berlin following a brief stint in rehab. There, he works for Rosen-Montag, an architect that hasn't ever really built anything. While in Berlin Jed shuffles through a myriad of bars, flings/hook-ups, and pseudo-relapses. The most interesting parts, for me, are the ones that dealt with his family in Chicago. The narrative in Chicago feels concrete and understandable, while the one in Berlin is disjointed and hazy at best, due in part to the novel's nonlinear structure. I also couldn't make sense of the whole architecture plot at all, which made for a frustrating reading experience.
Overall, the book is all over the place, but the prose (and the fact that I needed to write a coherent paper one this) kept me engaged through the end, even if I couldn't really make sense of the plot afterward.