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A review by khopeisz
People Collide by Isle McElroy
3.5
For me, the way the story was told prevented it from being truly effective. There was too much interiority, which is funny to say considering the premise of the novel. But I kept being told things and not shown things. A behavior trait was discussed at length but conservatively shown. I couldn’t connect with the characters bc of this.
I believe we are meant to generally examine how our identities are grafted onto others’, etc etc, how the identities of Eli and Elizabeth are broken down and then reconstructed (a line towards the end of the book pretty much says this). And we see this the way society interacts with Eli as Elizabeth, but not so much the other way around. Plus there were other thematic-adjacent tangents the author would go on, like imperialism, that I wished the book had been longer to explore these things satisfactorily (I feel like Exciting Times is a better example of this).
Wish we’d been given more of a sense of place. I’m not entirely convinced the author has been to Paris or Bulgaria. And what’s up w the unresolved terrorist attack? Why involve that? I don’t need it to be resolved, I just didn’t totally understand its inclusion.
The positives: while there is sooooo much telling going on the book, there were a lot of lines with which I resonated. I felt the author spoke to human nature well on occasion, on other occasions I felt they made generalizations that were akin to surface level philosophies on gender.
Another positive: ngl, I thought it was very hot when Elizabeth as Eli told Eli as Elizabeth that they’d already purchased their museum tickets, knowing they were being followed. And of course the gender swap sex scene was amazing. I feel like I need more literary gender swap sex scenes now lol.
I believe we are meant to generally examine how our identities are grafted onto others’, etc etc, how the identities of Eli and Elizabeth are broken down and then reconstructed (a line towards the end of the book pretty much says this). And we see this the way society interacts with Eli as Elizabeth, but not so much the other way around. Plus there were other thematic-adjacent tangents the author would go on, like imperialism, that I wished the book had been longer to explore these things satisfactorily (I feel like Exciting Times is a better example of this).
Wish we’d been given more of a sense of place. I’m not entirely convinced the author has been to Paris or Bulgaria. And what’s up w the unresolved terrorist attack? Why involve that? I don’t need it to be resolved, I just didn’t totally understand its inclusion.
The positives: while there is sooooo much telling going on the book, there were a lot of lines with which I resonated. I felt the author spoke to human nature well on occasion, on other occasions I felt they made generalizations that were akin to surface level philosophies on gender.
Another positive: ngl, I thought it was very hot when Elizabeth as Eli told Eli as Elizabeth that they’d already purchased their museum tickets, knowing they were being followed. And of course the gender swap sex scene was amazing. I feel like I need more literary gender swap sex scenes now lol.