A review by jeezjane
Confession of the Lioness by Mia Couto
1.0
- 1.5/5
- this sounds evil of me but i was very excited to give this book one star. i would have actually abandoned it mid-way through because i was having a horrible time with it, but the thought of being able to complete it and being able to legitimately rate it one star pushed me forward.
- then i had to amend my rating to 1.5 star because it was so bad that i still completed the book? that deserves some credit
- anyway imo it was pretty bad
- these lions are terrorizing a tiny village called kulumani, that is still recovering from a past war. women are treated like shit here, and everyone has a shit life. a hunter is hired to get rid of the lions, and the book switches between his pov and the pov of a woman, mariamar, whose sister died from a lionness attack, and who had a past encounter with the hunter in which she fell in love with him(??)
- i found it so grueling to get through. purple prose, non sequitors everywhere, unclear timeliness (some of it probably purposefully done, but i refuse to believe all of it was on purpose, b/c... why would you make it this confusing on purpose), superficial descriptions of the setting but very little detail to allow the reader to actually understand fully what's going on, and for all that, some pointless bits of info are repeated over and over again, with slightly different wording
- there is a mystery rooted in supernatural elements that is never explained. there is personal history and angst that is "resolved" in truly unsatisfactory ways. there is no real character development. on the whole, the writing makes it read like some fever dream, or someone writing their dreams after waking up: it almost makes sense if you just barely think about it, but if you push just a little, it makes... no sense... and i do get that the genre of the book is magic realism, but it really didn't work for me because even the "real life" of the hunter was not really written that well. the author can write some beautiful non-sequitors but the sheer volume of them and lack of focus on the outside world made it seem that much of the hunter's diaries or the girl's introspection/thoughts are just filler to show off those non-sequitors. there is a plot (trying to kill the lions), but i thought the focus was weak/hazy, easily distracted, almost like the story itself needed a pair of glasses.
- did not enjoy it!!! sorry!!!!
- this sounds evil of me but i was very excited to give this book one star. i would have actually abandoned it mid-way through because i was having a horrible time with it, but the thought of being able to complete it and being able to legitimately rate it one star pushed me forward.
- then i had to amend my rating to 1.5 star because it was so bad that i still completed the book? that deserves some credit
- anyway imo it was pretty bad
- these lions are terrorizing a tiny village called kulumani, that is still recovering from a past war. women are treated like shit here, and everyone has a shit life. a hunter is hired to get rid of the lions, and the book switches between his pov and the pov of a woman, mariamar, whose sister died from a lionness attack, and who had a past encounter with the hunter in which she fell in love with him(??)
- i found it so grueling to get through. purple prose, non sequitors everywhere, unclear timeliness (some of it probably purposefully done, but i refuse to believe all of it was on purpose, b/c... why would you make it this confusing on purpose), superficial descriptions of the setting but very little detail to allow the reader to actually understand fully what's going on, and for all that, some pointless bits of info are repeated over and over again, with slightly different wording
- there is a mystery rooted in supernatural elements that is never explained. there is personal history and angst that is "resolved" in truly unsatisfactory ways. there is no real character development. on the whole, the writing makes it read like some fever dream, or someone writing their dreams after waking up: it almost makes sense if you just barely think about it, but if you push just a little, it makes... no sense... and i do get that the genre of the book is magic realism, but it really didn't work for me because even the "real life" of the hunter was not really written that well. the author can write some beautiful non-sequitors but the sheer volume of them and lack of focus on the outside world made it seem that much of the hunter's diaries or the girl's introspection/thoughts are just filler to show off those non-sequitors. there is a plot (trying to kill the lions), but i thought the focus was weak/hazy, easily distracted, almost like the story itself needed a pair of glasses.
- did not enjoy it!!! sorry!!!!