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potterpav's review against another edition
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
i don’t really know what to make of this book.. i really enjoyed the first half, esp the “ivan the terrible” chapter, as i found ivan to be the most interesting character of all, but i don’t know whether my dissatisfaction has to do with the characters or the fact it was a short story collection. it was probably “the point” to not like any of the characters, they were all very pretentious but i assumed it was on purpose, and i found their conversations very taxing to read again and again as they kept arguing over the same points but not doing anything about it.
it’s a shame bc the woman with the sturgeon farm (Bea) was my fav chapter, but she appears briefly for 20 pages and is never seen again - and i realise i liked this the most bc it was something different to the rest of the book. it’s so focused around men that i got a glimpse of a woman and fell to my knees with joy, only for her to leave as quickly as she arrived. fatima was also so enclosed in a man’s world, and the women in seamus’s poetry class were unkind, purposefully-ignorant. i feel like that’s what most of the book can be drilled down to: none of the conversations match up. the characters just say a sentence that has a perfectly normal response (“how are you feeling?” “i’m okay, how are you?”) but instead they just talk to each other in mismatched sentences. it’s probably supposed to show how self-centred they all are, but after 300 pages it just gets annoying.
if you like passive yet irritating characters who come from wealth, are all basically the same (to the point where names mean nothing), are all in one big casual friends w benefits relationship, and books where there’s many, MANY characters .. this is for you. writing was beautiful if not a bit too poetic sometimes, i felt the point got lost occasionally, but yeah. some bits really were stunning, but overall it was just a bit .. flat. i suppose.
it’s a shame bc the woman with the sturgeon farm (Bea) was my fav chapter, but she appears briefly for 20 pages and is never seen again - and i realise i liked this the most bc it was something different to the rest of the book. it’s so focused around men that i got a glimpse of a woman and fell to my knees with joy, only for her to leave as quickly as she arrived. fatima was also so enclosed in a man’s world, and the women in seamus’s poetry class were unkind, purposefully-ignorant. i feel like that’s what most of the book can be drilled down to: none of the conversations match up. the characters just say a sentence that has a perfectly normal response (“how are you feeling?” “i’m okay, how are you?”) but instead they just talk to each other in mismatched sentences. it’s probably supposed to show how self-centred they all are, but after 300 pages it just gets annoying.
if you like passive yet irritating characters who come from wealth, are all basically the same (to the point where names mean nothing), are all in one big casual friends w benefits relationship, and books where there’s many, MANY characters .. this is for you. writing was beautiful if not a bit too poetic sometimes, i felt the point got lost occasionally, but yeah. some bits really were stunning, but overall it was just a bit .. flat. i suppose.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Sexual harassment
Minor: Hate crime, Homophobia, and Abortion