brittniphillips's review
1.0
That was awful.... I dont think I understood one sentence in that entire book. If you can find a sentence then, please explain it to me. All I read were unrelated spurts of thought. It was written like how someone would write a speech they were giving; random thoughts written down to prompt yourself of a story or direction you wanted to speak about.
dixiet's review
3.0
Unique format which was kind of fun to read. Overall I'm not sure I enjoyed this, but I'm glad I read it.
markhadley's review
adventurous
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
kitty31478's review
4.0
Experimental literature is definitely something that’s for sure. The idea that you can shuffle the chapters and get the whole story in a random order is a very fun concept. While it does get confusing piecing together the timeline, it’s part of the challenge. It is a slow book but I’m aware it’s supposed to be slow by nature, it’s simply a slow story, not a whole lot happens it’s simply talking about people’s lives. I have no real criticism, it was fun to read. My only small issue is sometimes I got lost reading not just because of the chapter mix up, but because this is an older book and some of the language isn’t used today but that’s just how older books are. Overall a fun reading experience.
jinxmonsoon's review
challenging
dark
funny
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
parchmints's review
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.75
andrewrmart's review
3.0
It is okay to both love art that tries to break boundaries and also accept that sometimes that art isn't actually all that interesting.
buying_time_'s review
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
If you are looking for a novel with a start-middle-end structure, it would be best to look elsewhere. However, technically, it does have those things, but just not necessarily all of it in the expected order. Fortunately, Johnson has written instructions of how to read the middle bits, which you really should follow. I will explain why shortly.
The Unfortunates kicks off with the narrator (a sports reporter) arriving at a city to report on a football match. The city is unfamiliar to him, although he's been here a few times previously. And at the final whistle, we get to read the match report -- it was, apparently, none too exciting. Oh, the life of a reporter, eh!
There are twenty-five chapters in addition to the start and end chapters. Johnson intended for these twenty-five be read in a random order. The reason you can read them so, is because they are each more a 'memory', than a chapter in a traditional work of fiction. However, they do really give, at times, an emotional insight into the solipsistic world of Bryan Stanley Johnson. The emotion comes from the narrator's friend, Tony, who is dying of cancer. The stream of consciousness, biography and reminisces that each chapter makes up is non-linear in narrative. The chapters in which Tony is the focus are absolutely the body of the work (the narrator even tells Tony that he'll 'get it all down'), and the descriptions of the toll that cancer takes on his friend and him are impactful, to say the least.
However, if you know anything of Johnson, you will not fail to see that there is another side to him: he's absolutely tedious, especially when it comes to sex and the women who are kind enough to let him get that far. The personal details that Johnson goes into -- this is a biographical book, as all of his are -- when he talks about sex is anything but erotic; unwieldy and uncomfortable springs to mind. Yet, it is nowhere near as awkward or tedious to read the sex scenes in his other famous novel, Trawl. It is best to read his tales of prowess as self-effacing. And alongside the sex, you get the narrator's humdrum observations about life, architecture (Johnson was a passionate amateur) and ham, among other mundane stuff. But so what, right?
Well, whilst it might sound like a chore to read, it isn't. And it isn't, because of the experience you get from the quality of the writing and the form of the book. The random chapters (I actually read the e-book version, which is not what Johnson would have been approving of, I'm sure. But it does work) make you work to link all the memories together even though they are out of sync. They are so skilfully composed, that you become quite immersed in the memories/memoirs of the writer. And once you appreciate that this is a very highly biographical work of fiction, then that adds to the experience, too. And whilst some experimental novels can be unruly to read, this is not. It is well worth the few hours it takes to read.
The Unfortunates kicks off with the narrator (a sports reporter) arriving at a city to report on a football match. The city is unfamiliar to him, although he's been here a few times previously. And at the final whistle, we get to read the match report -- it was, apparently, none too exciting. Oh, the life of a reporter, eh!
There are twenty-five chapters in addition to the start and end chapters. Johnson intended for these twenty-five be read in a random order. The reason you can read them so, is because they are each more a 'memory', than a chapter in a traditional work of fiction. However, they do really give, at times, an emotional insight into the solipsistic world of Bryan Stanley Johnson. The emotion comes from the narrator's friend, Tony, who is dying of cancer. The stream of consciousness, biography and reminisces that each chapter makes up is non-linear in narrative. The chapters in which Tony is the focus are absolutely the body of the work (the narrator even tells Tony that he'll 'get it all down'), and the descriptions of the toll that cancer takes on his friend and him are impactful, to say the least.
However, if you know anything of Johnson, you will not fail to see that there is another side to him: he's absolutely tedious, especially when it comes to sex and the women who are kind enough to let him get that far. The personal details that Johnson goes into -- this is a biographical book, as all of his are -- when he talks about sex is anything but erotic; unwieldy and uncomfortable springs to mind. Yet, it is nowhere near as awkward or tedious to read the sex scenes in his other famous novel, Trawl. It is best to read his tales of prowess as self-effacing. And alongside the sex, you get the narrator's humdrum observations about life, architecture (Johnson was a passionate amateur) and ham, among other mundane stuff. But so what, right?
Well, whilst it might sound like a chore to read, it isn't. And it isn't, because of the experience you get from the quality of the writing and the form of the book. The random chapters (I actually read the e-book version, which is not what Johnson would have been approving of, I'm sure. But it does work) make you work to link all the memories together even though they are out of sync. They are so skilfully composed, that you become quite immersed in the memories/memoirs of the writer. And once you appreciate that this is a very highly biographical work of fiction, then that adds to the experience, too. And whilst some experimental novels can be unruly to read, this is not. It is well worth the few hours it takes to read.
gigiluvly's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
I enjoyed this book, but it is a slow and hard read. I liked reading about his grief though, and enjoyed the stream of consciousness writing - it really reminds me of the way we think about things in our heads. The author is a little insufferable, but I actually found that a little relatable. Like, I also think of kinda shitty things sometimes in a pretentious way, but he also seemed a little aware of it too. It just felt even more like a stream of consciousness - you don't really edit yourself when you're thinking in the moment, so it made sense to me that someone would think this way.