Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - In the Distance

Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'

In the Distance by Hernán Díaz

8 reviews

carojust's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

4.25

This is a story about survival, solitude, human connection, and the great frontier. It's centered around a true hero, Håkan, a boy from Sweden who is lost and alone upon arriving in San Francisco, wandering into old age.

Hernan Diaz has the ability to create such a vivid world with what feels like effortless simplicity. Like in "Trust," he's able to illustrate every detail with historical loyalty, drawing you into worlds of goldmining, Native American families, naturalists, and the animals, deserts and plains of America.

A good portion of the book is dedicated to Håkan's isolation away from a society that has traumatized him, and these moments of carefully learning how to survive remind me so much of "I Who Have Never Known Men." If you love that book, you'll love this one. Both heroes are innocent in how they perceive other humans, while entirely shaped by nature.

Also, that loyal burro, I hope he lived a happy life 🥺

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isanto's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional sad slow-paced

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

5.0

TLDR
5/5 on every measure of a book that matters, 4.5/5 on the pain-o-meter. not for the faint of heart.

—

i don’t typically enjoy historical fiction, and even of that genre westerns intrigue me the least. picked this up because i enjoyed “trust” & saw that this was a Pulitzer nominee, so i thought: hopefully this is at least as good as “trust.”

i honestly think this is even better. how do i even articulate what i love about this book?

achingly beautiful prose, masterful narrative structure, exquisite characterization.

“in the distance” is the story of a protagonist more god than man, shrouded in mythos, incomprehensible even to those around him. i cannot think of a less relatable protagonist ive encountered in recent books. and yet, in less than 300 pages, diaz brings him fully to life, crafting a character whose story is so unbelievable that he cannot help but become real. i’m not exaggerating when i say that no protagonist more compelling comes to mind.

diaz’s ability to describe emotion, belief, physical sensation — all of it comes together to create such an immersive book that i felt physically empty after i finished it. reading “in the distance” is so intimate that it feels like hearing a confession, like being compelled to bear witness.

from a literary standpoint, diaz plays with a lot of different elements and themes — time, legend-making, storytelling, solitude, — that make the book truly artful.

in the end i’m just a hoe for a story about stories: what does it mean to tell a story about ourselves? what is the self if not a story? and what do we do when our stories are told for us?

to me, this is the perfect bildungsroman.

even if you’re like me and don’t care for westerns or historical fiction, if you’re looking for exquisite (and i mean exquisite) writing, a unique protagonist, or simply to become very upset, definitely give this a try.

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readerette's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark 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? No

3.0

If you liked Grapes of Wrath, you'll probably like this, since it's basically the same story but about one man surviving in the Old West instead of a family surviving during the Great Depression. If you're expecting something akin to the wonder and depth of Trust, though, you'll be disappointed (though if you didn't like Trust maybe this would be more to your taste, since it's quite different). Well-written and Håkan is easy to empathize with.

The edition I read had a rather distasteful note after the story that "literature is not the same as publishing", which in the context of this overwrought book feels snobbish.

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