leahsbooks's review
I received an advance reader copy, but this is one of the few books I had to stop reading. I wanted to finish, unfortunately I had to give up at 40%. Normally, by this point, I have been able to identify a plot. However, nothing had emerged in this one.
The story jumped around so much that it was really disorganized and disconnected. There was a lot of British slang, much of which I didn't understand. Often it would jump back and forth between the present and various times throughout the past with no warning and for no discernible reason. This was unrelated to whatever he was talking about at the time. There was constant use of italics and ellipses, as well as smushing words together that didn't need to be, frequent cursing, and honestly, the book turned my stomach.
I started to really lose interest when the author discussed hurting the family dog on purpose. The author definitely isn't a likable character at any point in the 40% that I did manage to read. But what really made me decide to stop reading was his persistent anti-semitic statements in the second chapter. Statements like "well, that's Israelites for you, always on the move - or at least they should be," and "he'd arrived at the conclusion that, were he to die without having had sexual intercourse, this would constitute a greater human tragedy than the Holocaust." There's plenty of memoirs that do make sense. Save the time and read one of those. This one isn't a good one.
The story jumped around so much that it was really disorganized and disconnected. There was a lot of British slang, much of which I didn't understand. Often it would jump back and forth between the present and various times throughout the past with no warning and for no discernible reason. This was unrelated to whatever he was talking about at the time. There was constant use of italics and ellipses, as well as smushing words together that didn't need to be, frequent cursing, and honestly, the book turned my stomach.
I started to really lose interest when the author discussed hurting the family dog on purpose. The author definitely isn't a likable character at any point in the 40% that I did manage to read. But what really made me decide to stop reading was his persistent anti-semitic statements in the second chapter. Statements like "well, that's Israelites for you, always on the move - or at least they should be," and "he'd arrived at the conclusion that, were he to die without having had sexual intercourse, this would constitute a greater human tragedy than the Holocaust." There's plenty of memoirs that do make sense. Save the time and read one of those. This one isn't a good one.
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