octanexit's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
felix_gif's review against another edition
4.0
Imagine if society was run like PE class
Perec describes this society and in doing so fills in the voids in his childhood left by the holocaust
Perec describes this society and in doing so fills in the voids in his childhood left by the holocaust
sarah_dietrich's review against another edition
2.0
I see what Perec is doing here, but I'm not convinced. The parallel threads of Perec's childhood memories and his imagined dystopian Olympiad society highlight the evils of the war machine, and it's all just too on the nose for me. You can see where it's going right from the start and then it gets to the point of and I was rolling my eyes. Perec says some interesting things about memory, but ultimately this was a letdown for me.
Spoiler
rape as sportmotifenjoyer's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
4.5
"There’s no recourse, no mercy, no salvation to be had from anyone. There’s not even any hope that time will sort things out. There’s this, there’s what you’ve seen, and now and again it will be less horrible than what you’ve seen and now and again it will be much more horrible than what you’ve seen. But wherever you turn your eyes, that’s what you will see, you will not see anything else, and that is the only thing that will turn out to be true."
sroel2's review against another edition
dark
tense
medium-paced
5.0
Moderate: Rape and Violence
fallinh's review against another edition
5.0
"the things that were, the things that stopped, the things that were closed off - things that surely were and today are no longer, but things that also were so that I may still be."
sgrady's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
5.0
melissardv's review against another edition
3.0
Autobio, sur le travail d'écriture de soi, les camps de concentration et le "sport"
astridrv's review against another edition
My first time reading Perec. Some bits were tedious, I am not going to lie, but I still really liked his writing and his precision in recounting what it does to someone to have such an unstable childhood with only unreliable narrators to recount it.