A review by raven_morgan
Find Me by Laura van den Berg
5.0
An eARC of this book was received from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
***
The premise of this book is simple: a strange illness moves through humanity. Silver blisters appear first, and then people begin to lose their memory - small things at first, and then larger and larger until they have no idea who or what they are. Joy is one of a group of people taken to the Hospital to be observed, perhaps immune to the sickness. We follow Joy through the Hospital and later, after she leaves and makes her way across the country in search of the mother who abandoned her as a baby.
I am in envy of some of the truly gorgeous writing in this book. There is a flow to it, often reading more like poetry than prose. No, there is no traditional narrative structure to much of it, which seems to have frustrated many readers (understandably, if you've come to this from a lot of the almost-cliched dystopia which is being published these days). It is not a convenient little tale that wraps up neatly at the end: it is something of a fever dream of a novel, utterly immersive and almost hypnotic to read.
I will admit to some frustration at the ultimate lack of resolution to Joy's journey, but in the context of the book - and the lack of real answers to anything in Joy's life, the sickness included - it makes sense, and fits with the rest of the book.
This book isn't going to be for everyone, but it was most definitely for me.
***
The premise of this book is simple: a strange illness moves through humanity. Silver blisters appear first, and then people begin to lose their memory - small things at first, and then larger and larger until they have no idea who or what they are. Joy is one of a group of people taken to the Hospital to be observed, perhaps immune to the sickness. We follow Joy through the Hospital and later, after she leaves and makes her way across the country in search of the mother who abandoned her as a baby.
I am in envy of some of the truly gorgeous writing in this book. There is a flow to it, often reading more like poetry than prose. No, there is no traditional narrative structure to much of it, which seems to have frustrated many readers (understandably, if you've come to this from a lot of the almost-cliched dystopia which is being published these days). It is not a convenient little tale that wraps up neatly at the end: it is something of a fever dream of a novel, utterly immersive and almost hypnotic to read.
I will admit to some frustration at the ultimate lack of resolution to Joy's journey, but in the context of the book - and the lack of real answers to anything in Joy's life, the sickness included - it makes sense, and fits with the rest of the book.
This book isn't going to be for everyone, but it was most definitely for me.