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A review by janaroos
Ulverton by Adam Thorpe
2.0
2.5 stars rounded down.
FINALLY. This wasn't all that bad, really, and some parts of the slice-of-life, slice-of-time approach to village life I really enjoyed. The little connections that threaded through the stories were satisfying to notice, and gave the village of Ulverton a veracity, a reality.
But. Then there was the section written entirely in vernacular without any punctuation whatsoever, without any paragraph breaks, not even for dialogue switching between speakers, and which I could barely stomach reading a page at a time. How dare you make me read that with my own eyes.
And that just broke my momentum completely. The fact that I finished it at all became an achievement, and the latter half of the book was a joyless slog despite the fact that I would otherwise have actually enjoyed much of the writing. It cost the book two whole stars. For one stretch of unbearable dialect. Readers beware, but writers even more so.
FINALLY. This wasn't all that bad, really, and some parts of the slice-of-life, slice-of-time approach to village life I really enjoyed. The little connections that threaded through the stories were satisfying to notice, and gave the village of Ulverton a veracity, a reality.
But. Then there was the section written entirely in vernacular without any punctuation whatsoever, without any paragraph breaks, not even for dialogue switching between speakers, and which I could barely stomach reading a page at a time. How dare you make me read that with my own eyes.
And that just broke my momentum completely. The fact that I finished it at all became an achievement, and the latter half of the book was a joyless slog despite the fact that I would otherwise have actually enjoyed much of the writing. It cost the book two whole stars. For one stretch of unbearable dialect. Readers beware, but writers even more so.