lucaswhite1's review
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
jessgock's review
4.0
I think the strongest testimony I can give for this book is that I've never had any interest in listening to Black Sabbath before, but this book made me desperate to listen to Master of Reality immediately.
An unusual entry in the 33 1/3 series, which are usually nonfiction essays about specific albums, John Darnielle's book is a young-adult novel told via letters from a teenage patient in a psychiatric hospital to one of the staff members there. He's been instructed to keep a journal, but the staff read what the patients write, so he decides that he's going to write his entries about how much he loves Master of Reality and why the staff really need to give him his Walkman and tapes back. Over the course of his journal, his entries move from open hostility to a surprisingly confessional tone (given the audience he's writing for). The whole thing has that wide-eyed, earnest feel of [b:Catcher in the Rye|5107|The Catcher in the Rye|J.D. Salinger|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1311457667s/5107.jpg|3036731] or [b:The Perks of Being a Wallflower|22628|The Perks of Being a Wallflower|Stephen Chbosky|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1312855306s/22628.jpg|2236198].
If you've ever loved a record so much that you memorized all the lyrics and felt like every song was about your life, Roger's impassioned entries about Master of Reality will make immediate sense to you. I think what works particularly well about this book is that Roger doesn't focus on the things that make him different from the reader (we get only the dimmest hints of why he's even in the hospital - he and his stepfather didn't get along, and there's a fleeting reference to a suicide attempt) but rather on that sense of what it means to love and relate to a work of art.
An unusual entry in the 33 1/3 series, which are usually nonfiction essays about specific albums, John Darnielle's book is a young-adult novel told via letters from a teenage patient in a psychiatric hospital to one of the staff members there. He's been instructed to keep a journal, but the staff read what the patients write, so he decides that he's going to write his entries about how much he loves Master of Reality and why the staff really need to give him his Walkman and tapes back. Over the course of his journal, his entries move from open hostility to a surprisingly confessional tone (given the audience he's writing for). The whole thing has that wide-eyed, earnest feel of [b:Catcher in the Rye|5107|The Catcher in the Rye|J.D. Salinger|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1311457667s/5107.jpg|3036731] or [b:The Perks of Being a Wallflower|22628|The Perks of Being a Wallflower|Stephen Chbosky|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1312855306s/22628.jpg|2236198].
If you've ever loved a record so much that you memorized all the lyrics and felt like every song was about your life, Roger's impassioned entries about Master of Reality will make immediate sense to you. I think what works particularly well about this book is that Roger doesn't focus on the things that make him different from the reader (we get only the dimmest hints of why he's even in the hospital - he and his stepfather didn't get along, and there's a fleeting reference to a suicide attempt) but rather on that sense of what it means to love and relate to a work of art.
ponycanyon's review
5.0
John Darnielle's 33 1/3 entry is the greatest YA epistolary novel I've ever read - it's head and shoulders above classics of the subgenre like "Dear Mr. Henshaw" and even "I am the cheese." It's a shame that the vast majority of readers and purveyors of YA won't even hear about it or give it a shot, as it's presented as a 33 1/3 entry (bite-sized books dedicated to covering classic albums) rather than a mere novel or even YA-marketed effort. But that doesn't change how ridiculously immersive, affecting, and emotionally raw the story is. Your narrator is a 15-year-old boy who's been committed to a correctional home/hospital by his parents, keeping a journal explaining why Black Sabbath's Master of Reality is his favorite thing on earth and why he so dearly wants the doctors to give him back his walkman and tapes. For any troubled teen who found solace in records (especially one particular record), the whole thing hits a little too close to home at times. Outstanding.
cknickerbocker's review
dark
emotional
hopeful
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
crying at my day job John.
framingthepicture's review
4.0
Leave it to John Darnielle to take an already engrossing premise for digging into the enduring appeal of a defining early metal album and turn it into a Trojan Horse for a bifurcated novella with a devastating structural twist that acts as an active condemnation of how the psychiatric system fails mentally ill youth and leaves them to helplessly fend for themselves once they become adults. Was not expecting this to nearly move me to tears. Possibly Darnielle's best work in the written word, maybe the most significant to supplementing his career-long artistic legacy in profound empathy.
car22oline's review
4.75
fictionalized album review genius now im a black sabbath fan somehow and an even bigger mountain goats fan
itacuz's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
If you’re picking up a 33 ⅓ book, you’re probably a fan of the album or band it features, the author themselves, or you like the series in general and want to expand your musical knowledge. Very rarely would you be looking for a fictional novella, but John Darnielle is not one to do things the way you’re supposed to. If you’re thinking “John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats?” you’d be right, but also John Darnielle of Wolf in White Van, Universal Harvester, and Devil House. Master of Reality was the first book Darnielle had ever written, and whether it influenced him to write his other books, or was simply the beginning of his authorial journey, is up to the man himself. Master of Reality was my first experience listening to a Black Sabbath album all the way through, and hearing it play while reading the book brought a clarity to every one of the rants scrawled in the notebook that narrates this book.
There were times when Master of Reality became more about the story being told than the album it was centering. Black Sabbath was ever present in the book, as it was in Roger’s life, but rather than learning about the band. you would be learning about what pushed Roger’s family to send him off to a hospital that felt more prison than healthcare. After you’d hear a heart wrenching, all-too-familiar story, he would launch into the importance of this album against one of Sabbath’s others, or break down why the order of songs matters so much. More than a book about the band, this was a book about being a fan of the album, about being in community with other people through music. Outside of the music, Darnielle wrote about understanding your mental health better than anyone with a medical degree, because you can prescribe albums to calm you down in ways pills never could.
The book jumps halfway through, right when the teenage dirtbag narrative gets tiring, and Roger introduces himself as an adult. His life is different, but his relationship with the music of Black Sabbath has stayed the same. He picks up where he left off in describing the importance of the album, while updating the audience of his entries about his life post-institution. Darnielle could have written a static stand-in for the listener/reader, he could have written a non-fiction entry in the series about what the music scene was like when this album came out. What makes this story so unique is Darnielle’s ability to create a complicated character who goes through the gauntlet of life and still has scars to show for it.
Darnielle is so clearly a fan of the music he’s writing about. I know from being a fan of his that his personal history is similar to that of his narrator. Making it still more impressive that he didn’t just write a pretentious tirade in support of his favorite album, while tearing apart the cultural institutions that resulted in the setting of Master of Reality for so many teenagers during that era. You don’t have to like his music to be a fan of his writing, just as you don’t have to enjoy Black Sabbath to get something out of this edition of 33 ⅓.
timothyotte's review
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
zoonewrevues's review
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
Content Warnings
Minor: Homophobia