louisipisi's review against another edition
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
1.5
beetaire's review against another edition
emotional
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Good book, realistic and mundane but wonderfully written. Stream of consciousness style and some good observations and metaphors for daily thoughts.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Miscarriage
smrankin5's review against another edition
1.0
I guess I'm not a fan of a disjointed book, told from the perspective of about 8 characters, that switches up each paragraph and takes you awhile to figure out who is even talking. Very tough and frankly depressing read
kecb12's review against another edition
3.0
My book club read this book two years ago and I just now got around to reading it. I wish I had been able to read it with them because there are some interesting things to discuss here: family drama, knowledge of the self, growing up, adults from the viewpoint of children (at various ages), childhood from the viewpoint of adults, dealing with the past, the hurt and anger of unfulfilled expectations, the freedom that comes from honesty. I feel the list could go on. I can't say that I really enjoyed this book, but I was intrigued by it, and I found many things in it that felt real and true. Sometimes that matters more than enjoyment.
booksaremysuperpower's review against another edition
2.0
Le sigh. A Reader's Dilemma: can you still enjoy a book and call it not good at the same time?
I'll admit I was a bit hesitant to pick up this book because the Goodreads ratings were consistently on the negative side, but I do really enjoy Mark Haddon and so I felt it deserved a read . While this is by no means his best book, I can still say that I liked it. I was torn between giving it a two or three star review, and ultimately I left it at a two because even though the writing carries much of Haddon's humor and spark, the story itself is such a yawn.
From reading other reviews, most people took issue with the "Stream of Consciousness" writing style Haddon employed in this book. This didn't bother so much, per se, but after a while the paragraphs of text from books the characters were reading, snippets of song lyrics, or the general list of flora/fauna/things to do in town that Haddon inserts randomly into the novel got on my nerves. I didn't know what these bits of text were supposed to mean in relation to the overall story and quite honestly, I didn't want to work that hard trying to read this book and figure it all out. I get why the author used this style of writing, though. All of us who have had family issues and are in uncomfortable situations among uncomfortable people, tend to be there and NOT there at the same time. We are on alert for any offense the estranged family member may or may not say, and yet when you are around someone whom you just don't like, your mind tends to drift off into our your own world. In this respect, Haddon captures that dichotomy perfectly with each of the characters. But it gets carried too far and too often, in my opinion.
I would say my biggest gripe with the novel is that Haddon doesn't create anything new here. I felt like I've read about these characters before in a different novel by a different author with a similar story. And in fact, essences of these characters show up in Haddon's other novel "A Spot of Bother", too. The only character in "Red House" that felt fresh and interesting was Angela, the troubled mother who may have the onset of Alzheimer's and is struggling to come to terms with her grief over her still-born baby 17 years prior. This is a story line I haven't seen too often in novels: grief and mourning mixed in with potential mental illness and how others cope with it. I almost think that if Haddon focused solely on Angela as the main character, this book would have been drastically more intriguing.
Instead, we get a hodge podge and imbalanced mix of angst and anxieties from all the characters, some of whom do not relate well to the overall story. Alex, the oldest son of Angela, for example, is barely in the book during the first half and adds little to the overall story line in general. Daisy, younger sister, gets a lot of page time but her story reads like a Lifetime Movie of the week (and not a very good one): girl who is dying to be loved, joins a Church, everyone misunderstands her, she secretly thinks she might be a lesbian, gets rejected by the mean popular girl... I actually yawned. Hasn't this been done before?
Benjy, the youngest son, is second to Angela in terms of character development. The author has a delicate and unique touch to writing young children, and Benjy's character carries a whiff of the autistic son in 'The Curious incident of the dog at Midnight", which is a spectacular read. While the women in the novel are written with some element of depth, the men are surprisingly lacking any sort of refreshing complexity. Again, it comes to down to revisiting these archetypes in many different novels: the selfish and removed doctor who has trouble relating, the cheating and lying husband, the horny teenager. Nothing exceptionally groundbreaking.
Haddon's humor still exists in this book and that is really why I waffled between two and three stars. He's just so funny, and his observations about people and how we tick tend to be spot on. But his humor gets a little tricky and sticks out like a sore thumb when it really shouldn't. His descriptions of the pastoral landscape of Wales, for example, felt oddly out of place given the simple dialogue between the characters. His language runs the gambit between poetic, lyrical, and downright brash. Think of a Walden poem with "poo" and "arse" scattered here and there. It doesn't fit somehow, as though the novel started off as something else but ended up going a different direction and none of the necessary connections were made. The story just felt too underdeveloped for me to truly appreciate. If you are fans of Haddon I wouldn't steer you away, but he is ultimately a much better writer than this latest effort.
I'll admit I was a bit hesitant to pick up this book because the Goodreads ratings were consistently on the negative side, but I do really enjoy Mark Haddon and so I felt it deserved a read . While this is by no means his best book, I can still say that I liked it. I was torn between giving it a two or three star review, and ultimately I left it at a two because even though the writing carries much of Haddon's humor and spark, the story itself is such a yawn.
From reading other reviews, most people took issue with the "Stream of Consciousness" writing style Haddon employed in this book. This didn't bother so much, per se, but after a while the paragraphs of text from books the characters were reading, snippets of song lyrics, or the general list of flora/fauna/things to do in town that Haddon inserts randomly into the novel got on my nerves. I didn't know what these bits of text were supposed to mean in relation to the overall story and quite honestly, I didn't want to work that hard trying to read this book and figure it all out. I get why the author used this style of writing, though. All of us who have had family issues and are in uncomfortable situations among uncomfortable people, tend to be there and NOT there at the same time. We are on alert for any offense the estranged family member may or may not say, and yet when you are around someone whom you just don't like, your mind tends to drift off into our your own world. In this respect, Haddon captures that dichotomy perfectly with each of the characters. But it gets carried too far and too often, in my opinion.
I would say my biggest gripe with the novel is that Haddon doesn't create anything new here. I felt like I've read about these characters before in a different novel by a different author with a similar story. And in fact, essences of these characters show up in Haddon's other novel "A Spot of Bother", too. The only character in "Red House" that felt fresh and interesting was Angela, the troubled mother who may have the onset of Alzheimer's and is struggling to come to terms with her grief over her still-born baby 17 years prior. This is a story line I haven't seen too often in novels: grief and mourning mixed in with potential mental illness and how others cope with it. I almost think that if Haddon focused solely on Angela as the main character, this book would have been drastically more intriguing.
Instead, we get a hodge podge and imbalanced mix of angst and anxieties from all the characters, some of whom do not relate well to the overall story. Alex, the oldest son of Angela, for example, is barely in the book during the first half and adds little to the overall story line in general. Daisy, younger sister, gets a lot of page time but her story reads like a Lifetime Movie of the week (and not a very good one): girl who is dying to be loved, joins a Church, everyone misunderstands her, she secretly thinks she might be a lesbian, gets rejected by the mean popular girl... I actually yawned. Hasn't this been done before?
Benjy, the youngest son, is second to Angela in terms of character development. The author has a delicate and unique touch to writing young children, and Benjy's character carries a whiff of the autistic son in 'The Curious incident of the dog at Midnight", which is a spectacular read. While the women in the novel are written with some element of depth, the men are surprisingly lacking any sort of refreshing complexity. Again, it comes to down to revisiting these archetypes in many different novels: the selfish and removed doctor who has trouble relating, the cheating and lying husband, the horny teenager. Nothing exceptionally groundbreaking.
Haddon's humor still exists in this book and that is really why I waffled between two and three stars. He's just so funny, and his observations about people and how we tick tend to be spot on. But his humor gets a little tricky and sticks out like a sore thumb when it really shouldn't. His descriptions of the pastoral landscape of Wales, for example, felt oddly out of place given the simple dialogue between the characters. His language runs the gambit between poetic, lyrical, and downright brash. Think of a Walden poem with "poo" and "arse" scattered here and there. It doesn't fit somehow, as though the novel started off as something else but ended up going a different direction and none of the necessary connections were made. The story just felt too underdeveloped for me to truly appreciate. If you are fans of Haddon I wouldn't steer you away, but he is ultimately a much better writer than this latest effort.
better_than_fiction's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
rwarner's review against another edition
4.0
This book is a workout. A mental workout. You have eight characters popping in and out of focus, and it's hard to keep track. I found it almost too tiring at first, and was tempted to quit reading, but I'm glad I plowed through. As you learn the characters, you have a much easier time of figuring out whose head you're in, and by the end of the book you don't have to work at it anymore.
Also, this book is weird, as it clambers into the minds and motives of eight different people, who are probably not much different from the rest of us, but frankly we're all kind of weird inside. This book squeezes past social niceties people cloak their innermost selves with and gets to the weird junk, and it's both fascinating and horrifying.
It's much bigger on character development (and character exposure) than plot, and no one gets the comeuppance they perhaps deserve, but you'll know eight people pretty well by the time you finish.
Also, this book is weird, as it clambers into the minds and motives of eight different people, who are probably not much different from the rest of us, but frankly we're all kind of weird inside. This book squeezes past social niceties people cloak their innermost selves with and gets to the weird junk, and it's both fascinating and horrifying.
It's much bigger on character development (and character exposure) than plot, and no one gets the comeuppance they perhaps deserve, but you'll know eight people pretty well by the time you finish.
julibug86's review against another edition
2.0
I really did not like this book. It's fine to write from different character perspectives, but not for just one paragraph. Also, the whole perspective of the stillborn baby was disturbing. Really disappointed since I loved the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time.