zana_reads_arcs's review against another edition
2.0
Maybe I need to read this instead of listening to the audio. While the narrator was great, I didn't really *get* it.
Anything related to race in America is something I like to read about, so I might give this another try.
Anything related to race in America is something I like to read about, so I might give this another try.
remigves's review
challenging
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
scrow1022's review against another edition
5.0
Chilling. Love how he puts his stories together (footnotes, appendices, notes to reader). And the language so luxurious - you wonder what is going on and then you follow it in and are entranced.
papercrowns's review against another edition
5.0
Incredible, darkly whimsical, and utterly horrific.
jgwc54e5's review against another edition
5.0
Wow, this was brilliant. I couldn’t take my eyes away from this story. Harrowing and utterly compelling.
arszania's review against another edition
3.0
I didn't get it really. I mean I get the point - racism is a horrible thing, war is a horrible thing people are quite horrible but this book didn't moved me not really. I will stay neutral when it comes to assessing it.
bookish_ann's review against another edition
4.0
For the Devil in America, however, malice itself was the end, and temptation a means only to destroy. Here, the Devil would pursue the righteous and the wicked, alike and implacably, to their everlasting doom…
This would always be a gutting story, but now.... America is just as horrible and bedeviled as it was. Grim, made worse by the fact that this all keeps happening.
This would always be a gutting story, but now.... America is just as horrible and bedeviled as it was. Grim, made worse by the fact that this all keeps happening.
codalion's review against another edition
5.0
I'd have to be a pretty fucked up person to not have to sit with how fucked up this all is, because it's all true. There is and was no hope for so many people, no uplift; to read about hope brutally betrayed is to remember the truth (of Reconstruction, but not just). I wanted to say that before anything about the story's craft--if I tried to affect a distance, formulate a grave and somber and artistic remove, weigh it casually against traditions, I think, in my case, that would be monstrously dishonest, and also dishonestly monstrous.
It's also wonderfully done, though, on a sentence level, and as metafiction. I should note also that I came to this (having previously heard of the author but not in a while) after reading an essay of his on writing dialect for authors of color; as a biracial writer with only a strong native grip on "standard" American English, I can't imagine myself able to do any ongoing justice to the speech of my relatives, much less anyone else's, but it was a lovely read.
This is a bloody place where we live. We, as in everyone here, and also the fewer we, as in the devils in America who reap.
(I liked "Dad's" contributions. I hope he liked the final form of the story.)
It's also wonderfully done, though, on a sentence level, and as metafiction. I should note also that I came to this (having previously heard of the author but not in a while) after reading an essay of his on writing dialect for authors of color; as a biracial writer with only a strong native grip on "standard" American English, I can't imagine myself able to do any ongoing justice to the speech of my relatives, much less anyone else's, but it was a lovely read.
This is a bloody place where we live. We, as in everyone here, and also the fewer we, as in the devils in America who reap.
(I liked "Dad's" contributions. I hope he liked the final form of the story.)