Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - They

My favourite part of this book was the introduction by Carmen Maria Machado… Unfortunately, this didn't work for me despite loving horror and dystopian fiction. I really struggled with the writing style, which was incredibly simple, sparse, and matter-of-fact. I struggled to get into any reading flow with this style and it left me feeling distanced from the stories. It also felt like key information was missing, leaving me me confused in many places about what was actually going on. Just in concept this was already going to be hard for me as I have historically struggled with even mosaic novels, and the concept for this was even less tied together - it was created by the author editing a selection of short stories to tie them together. The stories each featured different characters and different but similar settings, but none of the characters stood out to me and I found them easy to mix up. We never get any name or traits for the main character - it seemed likely it was all from the same perspective but I wasn't sure because we get no internal monologue or personality. I was interested in the questions this collection/novella was trying to explore around the suppression of art but I don't feel that I got much on this topic and I was left feeling I had missed the point of a few stories - I would be intrigued to read a literary analysis of this one! There was an unsettling vibe that came through the stories and some chilling small sections (e.g. a woman being told after breaking her ankle that she was being allowed to show pain for 48 hours and her using this to express all her suppressed grief, and a woman who jumps into a pond every morning because she is affected by the memory of being burned alive). I also enjoyed the small moments of absurd darkness amongst the descriptions of mundanity. I was tempted to DNF but got on slightly better when I treated this more as a short story collection and tried to read each story in one sitting.

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spooderman's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

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sorcha's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

3.75

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bubblyfemme's review against another edition

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mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

This book had very little impact on me.

As someone who loves dystopian novels I thought this would be an interesting read. However, when I read it, the story felt empty.
The setting and characters had no individuality, and I felt very little empathy for any of them.
To be honest, I don't understand why it is advertised as ‘a masterpiece’ when it is one of the most generic dystopian novels I have ever read.

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