A review by bronzeageholly
Vladimir by Julia May Jonas

challenging dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

3.75

Beginning: 
The main character is entirely unlikeable, she has a pernicious inner monologue which makes for an interesting unreliable narrator. It was very intriguing but also painful to hear how her self-hatred is a knife that she twists into everyone around her without even realising.

I found all the characters very considered and real; I reflected a lot on the varying power dynamics in different relationships. You think that the book is focused on titular Vladimir, or maybe it is all about John (the husband on trial and ‘ruining her life’), but is it really about any man at all? Men appear in every rumination, but at the end of each point it is about women and how each perceive each other and themselves that she deeply cares about but can’t admit.

At many points, it was difficult to hear the main characters’ obsessive thoughts and archaic perspectives (especially around the women who had accused her husband), and, after a while, I became a bit bored of the sameness of it. But then the middle arrives.

Middle: 
What a wild mid-life crisis. Didn’t want to put it down.

End:  
I don’t think the ending was for me. The wrap-up did not feel like it pushed me as a reader, especially after such an incredible and intense middle. I felt it would have been better to be left on a cliff-hanger.
When Vladimir goes off in the kayak alone at night and John goes to bed in the cabin is where I think it should have ended. I wanted to be left with the mystery of whether anything would happen to Vladimir and how to case against John would go. I wanted to be able to reflect more on the characters and what I think they were portraying rather than be spoon-fed their futures.
If I were to read this book again, I think I would rather stop reading it around chapter 20.
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