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liloopie's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Pure anguish from start to finish! This book is a gut check I couldn’t but feel for Eillish. Her despair with her choices and the losses she has to sustain are so, palpable that it leaves your feeling gritty, and anguish in your heart. Although the ending was not wrapped up in a pretty bow, it’s fitting since the plot is catastrophic. Thus, the ending is just is fitting due to the acidic nature of the story, It’s hard to say you enjoy the story, but rather you survived the experience like the characters. Deeply moving and sorrowful, Paul Lynch, writes a beautiful very disturbing story that makes you question your own sanity of this very disturbing dystopian story.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship
Moderate: Death, Dementia, and Dysphoria
l1ndz7's review against another edition
5.0
This book was incredibly moving, devastating and completely reminiscent of world affairs. As the war was brought closer to Eilish’s family, it reminded me more and more of the occupation in Palestine and that the events that take place in this book have happened and are happening in places around the world right now. This is reality, maybe a far off reality to the West, but real nonetheless.
Normally, a book with huge paragraphs and no quotation marks would have been a DNF immediately (sorry not sorry Sally Rooney) but the writing was so poetic and urgent, I couldn’t stop reading. Yes, this took me months to read but it shook me and I had to put it down and read something else at times because it was so intense.
I listened to an interview of Paul Lynch shortly after writing this and watching that solidified Paul as an auto-buy author. He said that the writing structure was intentional and was meant to keep you in the moment and not just sympathize but empathize with Eilish. He also said that this novel explores the complexity of situations like this and make you realize how hard it is to leave everything you know. Once you read this, you will no longer say when asked questions like, “would you have left immediately when the Holocaust happened?” that you would. It’s never as easy it seems trying to escape something that you’re blind to and have very little knowledge about. Paul intended this novel to “decondition” us and I think he did so brilliantly. In addition, it also explores the problem with denial and how it’s useful to have until it’s not and if you deny long enough it ends up making everything worse.
What a fantastic novel. Well done, Paul Lynch 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Normally, a book with huge paragraphs and no quotation marks would have been a DNF immediately (sorry not sorry Sally Rooney) but the writing was so poetic and urgent, I couldn’t stop reading. Yes, this took me months to read but it shook me and I had to put it down and read something else at times because it was so intense.
I listened to an interview of Paul Lynch shortly after writing this and watching that solidified Paul as an auto-buy author. He said that the writing structure was intentional and was meant to keep you in the moment and not just sympathize but empathize with Eilish. He also said that this novel explores the complexity of situations like this and make you realize how hard it is to leave everything you know. Once you read this, you will no longer say when asked questions like, “would you have left immediately when the Holocaust happened?” that you would. It’s never as easy it seems trying to escape something that you’re blind to and have very little knowledge about. Paul intended this novel to “decondition” us and I think he did so brilliantly. In addition, it also explores the problem with denial and how it’s useful to have until it’s not and if you deny long enough it ends up making everything worse.
What a fantastic novel. Well done, Paul Lynch 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, Grief, Murder, Dysphoria, and War
Moderate: Child death, Genocide, Blood, Police brutality, Dementia, and Injury/Injury detail
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