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3.12 AVERAGE
3.12 AVERAGE
ENFIN...
Ça allait au début, même si le contexte était un peu différent, je trouvais beaucoup de ce que j'aime habituellement chez Jonathan Lethem. Puis ça a dérivé... et j'ai traîné cette lecture comme un boulet pendant des semaines, parce que rendue là, je voulais finir et j'espérais encore être surprise et ravie par la fin. Eh non. J'ai rarement eu aussi hâte de lire trois romans policiers de suite.
Ça allait au début, même si le contexte était un peu différent, je trouvais beaucoup de ce que j'aime habituellement chez Jonathan Lethem. Puis ça a dérivé... et j'ai traîné cette lecture comme un boulet pendant des semaines, parce que rendue là, je voulais finir et j'espérais encore être surprise et ravie par la fin. Eh non. J'ai rarement eu aussi hâte de lire trois romans policiers de suite.
This story is really elegant. Focusing on a man simply ascribed as Journeyman, in an isolated rural community post-event disabling all tech from working, save for a strange nuclear drill, we follow a simple moral dilemma. An outsider enters the otherwise well community and entangles himself in the personal life of the MC. Fallout ensues.
It’s just executed really, really well, though. Characterization is great. I have always enjoyed ideologues done well. Here it is the crux of the well turning plot. It’s also hard to pin down. It’s weird enough that you’re never completely sure about anything, so it’s mysterious, which in turn whets the appetite for more information about the world building, done organically. It’s easy to picture the strange world, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome.
It’s just executed really, really well, though. Characterization is great. I have always enjoyed ideologues done well. Here it is the crux of the well turning plot. It’s also hard to pin down. It’s weird enough that you’re never completely sure about anything, so it’s mysterious, which in turn whets the appetite for more information about the world building, done organically. It’s easy to picture the strange world, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome.
dark
funny
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Very peaceful for fiction set in a post-apocalyptic era which is a bit refreshing.
None of the characters was especially compelling. The narrator is kind of a wuss, physically and philosophically, the antagonist is a narcissist and has clearly gone insane, the sister is too distant to admire much and it is likely that the entire community is voluntarily enslaved to a community of bullies. Really, what's to like?
It felt very high concept, maybe allegorical, and I kept bracing myself for some kind of very obvious metafictional morass. (It didn't arrive, at least not in an obvious way.) I just didn't care enough to figure out what the point of it was.
At first it drove me a bit crazy--I could have sworn I had read part of this story before... it was published in The New Yorker a couple years ago under the title "The Starlet Apartments."
None of the characters was especially compelling. The narrator is kind of a wuss, physically and philosophically, the antagonist is a narcissist and has clearly gone insane, the sister is too distant to admire much and it is likely that the entire community is voluntarily enslaved to a community of bullies. Really, what's to like?
It felt very high concept, maybe allegorical, and I kept bracing myself for some kind of very obvious metafictional morass. (It didn't arrive, at least not in an obvious way.) I just didn't care enough to figure out what the point of it was.
At first it drove me a bit crazy--I could have sworn I had read part of this story before... it was published in The New Yorker a couple years ago under the title "The Starlet Apartments."
This book was super confusing and I couldn’t even tell what was going on most of the time.
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I'd sell my left arm for a version of this book where Journeyman doesn't exist and it's from Maddie's perspective. Maybe that's what Lethem was going for, but if it was, he shouldn't have.
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes