Honestly it probably should be five stars but I have some misogynistic hangups about how it's literally an unabashed romantic melodrama that ends in tHonestly it probably should be five stars but I have some misogynistic hangups about how it's literally an unabashed romantic melodrama that ends in the famous tragedy.
Wonderful book, incredibly engaging authorial voice and a deeply, truly moving love story. Would unreservedly recommend this to anyone who likes fantasy or any of the Greek myths....more
Look it's fine, they go a'viking and it's all very historically accurate but my God the prose is a slog. That stupid sort-of--a-character narrator thiLook it's fine, they go a'viking and it's all very historically accurate but my God the prose is a slog. That stupid sort-of--a-character narrator thing going on where it feels like the perspective is falling in and out of characters as necessary and what may have been fresh, clever and exciting 70 years ago is just thoroughly wearing to me in 2022.
If you really want to read some viking stories then this is the place to do it, though!...more
The Old Man and the Sea was the last novel published during Hemingway's lifetime.
Nominally it tells the story of a man dragged out to sea, battling toThe Old Man and the Sea was the last novel published during Hemingway's lifetime.
Nominally it tells the story of a man dragged out to sea, battling to catch a giant Marlin. But really it reads like a hundred page suicide note. It's not entirely successful (I found it pretty difficult to root for the protagonist vs the fish. I'd have preferred the fish to win, if I'm honest), but is superbly written and utterly emotionally overwhelming.
Plus the page count is barely into triple-figures so even someone with extremely sparse reading time can get through it in a session or two....more
Paedophile is a bad man and an unreliable narrator. News at ten.
No seriously though, the use of language and word games raise the odd smile throughoutPaedophile is a bad man and an unreliable narrator. News at ten.
No seriously though, the use of language and word games raise the odd smile throughout and yes Nabokov gets bonus points because English isn't his first -or even second- language but again: Praising good prose is like applauding because someone played a lot of notes.
The characters are uniformly flat and unlikeable, the plot is repetitive, circular and dull and even with Jeremy Irons reading this thing to me it was an absolute slog that left me feeling 80% bored to 20% uncomfortable....more
Geek Love, has it's sights clearly set on being a Literate look at what it is that defines freakishness and so conversely what constitutes normality. Geek Love, has it's sights clearly set on being a Literate look at what it is that defines freakishness and so conversely what constitutes normality. Frankly, to clear this up early; the book failed to resonate with me at all, and this review is going to consist of my emotional response to a book that elicited irritation.
The novel is a rambling, first person biography of Olympia Binewski, a hunch-backed albino dwarf birthed of her father's mad ambition to revive his carnival by breeding freaks. Already out in the world are Arturo the aqua boy (born with flippers instead of limbs) and the Siamese twins Ipheginia and Electra. Still to come is the telekinetic(!) Fortunato, nicknamed "Chick" a mistake of such gargantuan, precious magnitude that it's difficult to put into words.
The positives first: Dunn is a good, if florid, writer. She frequently digresses into purple-hued sidebars, but always keeps the thread of the narrative engaging, though there are one or two sections where she clearly believed she was going to write a few pages of Post Modern Genius that really clunk. The characters are, if not believable, interesting and compelling, and their relationships are entertaining in that "peek-through-your-fingers" inevitable car-crash kind of way.
But it Doesn't Work. The book initially imparts to us that Aloysius and "Crystal Lil" Binewski agreed to get her hopped up on drugs and radioactive substances then squirt out some freaky babies at the very start of the book. So from page one the rational part of the brain is looking sidelong at the novel and going "...oh...kay?". Miraculously a brood of freaks make their way into the world, with Lil suffering no side effect worse than addiction, and they take to life as Carnival curiosities.
Then we're trapped for the ride behind the rather dewy and pathetic eyes of Olympia, who spends her entire life as quite the beaten dog wondering what it did wrong. I don't mean to trivialise brain-washing or familial abuse in any way, but I have always had absolutely zero tolerance when it comes to Tragic Life Stories. If your idea of fun is wallowing in vicarious misery then good on you, I suppose, but I just can't do it. There are a few scenes peppered apologetically around the book where Oly is a Strong Character, but for the vast majority she is deeply unsympathetic in both her choices and reasoning. None of the characters did things it felt that Actual People would do at any point (view spoiler)[(even when the circus burned down our heroine had nothing left in her life, rather than reclaim her precious daughter she... did fuck all for at least a decade) (hide spoiler)] and the whole thing had the Precious tang of Magical Realism and allegory before all else.
Personified by Chick. Chick, as a baby, had telekinetic power enough to drag his mother out of a van and across a pavement to feed from her, yet never killed anyone because of "Operant Conditioning" that his parents trained him with (I think I had a Homer Simpson-esque conversation with the rational side of my brain at this juncture: "You read whatever the hell you want, I'm out of here"). He is so powerful and precise that he can clear a swimming pool of algae in a second. Towards the end of the book he can go inside people's minds and change their moods (except Arty for some reason that's never quite explained). He is a book-ruiner. He is Doctor Manhattan constrained by a narrative that insists he act entirely irrational at all times (and not irrational in the fun "exploding heads" kind of way). It's mind-alteringly frustrating to read. (view spoiler)[Especially with his absolutely dreadful "too pure to live" conflagratory suicide/sacrifice allegory foreshadowed far too precisely and clumsily in one utterly out of character scene earlier. (hide spoiler)]
It's not a book that's devoid of fun, but there is an awful lot of Geek before the Love....more
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