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emmareadsdk 's review for:
Double Blind
by Edward St. Aubyn
To be honest, this book felt like when you meet someone incredibly attractive, seeming like the best lay you could ever have with the initial contact exploding with chemistry, which then ends up summing up a lousy sexual encounter where every kiss is weird, every caress insincere, awkwardly fumbling, and finally dwindles into a very disappointing attempt of a fake climax. An intense flame going out in -20C winter.
So yeah, I had great expectations from reading the first couple of pages, where St Aubyn touches on the climate change/biodiversity crisis, but he only ends up making a couple of other comments on that and other topics throughout the book, with no other real thoughts than what scientists and other people more clever than him, have already published. There's no story. Similarly he doesn't seem to have wanted to use the characters as anything other than vessels of his 'ground-breaking' thoughts. As soon as I became interested in a character's life and work, I was dragged into another set of issues. Furthermore the end was strange and abrupt; Hunter's sudden firing of Saul, Olivia and Sebastian meeting and the ridiculous way Francis simply escaped his responsibilities in a psilocybin-infused escape was almost comical if it wasn't so stupid. Not that conservationists should be held to higher standards than other people, but it just didn't match up with how he had otherwise acted in the book. An awful lot of ties that had to be knotted quickly. If only he had stuck to one topic and storyline.
If I could give him an advice, it would be to pull this book from the market and then write Francis' story as a struggling conservationist. Or whatever. Maybe I'll just write the book he seemingly was too lazy to gather enough information for or which he found was way too political/scientifically complex.
I guess this is a book, which he purposefully designed to be a taster for several relevant and difficult topics, but which he lacked the expertise and patience to direct at anything in particular. Ultimately, it left me feeling intellectually frustrated. At least I don't have to walk home afterwards.
So yeah, I had great expectations from reading the first couple of pages, where St Aubyn touches on the climate change/biodiversity crisis, but he only ends up making a couple of other comments on that and other topics throughout the book, with no other real thoughts than what scientists and other people more clever than him, have already published. There's no story. Similarly he doesn't seem to have wanted to use the characters as anything other than vessels of his 'ground-breaking' thoughts. As soon as I became interested in a character's life and work, I was dragged into another set of issues. Furthermore the end was strange and abrupt; Hunter's sudden firing of Saul, Olivia and Sebastian meeting and the ridiculous way Francis simply escaped his responsibilities in a psilocybin-infused escape was almost comical if it wasn't so stupid. Not that conservationists should be held to higher standards than other people, but it just didn't match up with how he had otherwise acted in the book. An awful lot of ties that had to be knotted quickly. If only he had stuck to one topic and storyline.
If I could give him an advice, it would be to pull this book from the market and then write Francis' story as a struggling conservationist. Or whatever. Maybe I'll just write the book he seemingly was too lazy to gather enough information for or which he found was way too political/scientifically complex.
I guess this is a book, which he purposefully designed to be a taster for several relevant and difficult topics, but which he lacked the expertise and patience to direct at anything in particular. Ultimately, it left me feeling intellectually frustrated. At least I don't have to walk home afterwards.