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A review by nannahnannah
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
3.0
Hmm. I’m not quite sure what to make of this book. I might just not be the type of person who can appreciate it fully, but I was left rather baffled by the whole thing.
Representation:
- the main characters are all from an unnamed West or South Asian country (someone said it felt a lot like Pakistan)
- one of the main characters (Nadia) is bi
Exit West is a story about immigration and about the life of one couple during the hardship and terror of war. About what all that does to a relationship and what that does to people and societies as a whole.
It’s beautiful and thought provoking. But I struggled to connect with the characters and their personal story because of the writing style. I’m not trying to be pretentious, and I know the style and its (mis)use of grammar is fully intentional, but reading wordy run-on sentences over and over and over gets exhausting really fast. There’s even one page that consists of a single run-on sentence containing 60 commas (as one reviewer counted).
The writing is also very detached, telling everything and showing almost nothing. We’re told what the characters feel, but there’s no feeling it, no experiencing anything in real time. It’s like reading events from an encyclopedia or wikipedia entry. The story is a good one, but I could never feel it or get absorbed by it.
What I did love were the magical realism elements. It really added a beautiful and almost uplifting element to an otherwise somber story. And the writing style isn’t bad; the author is clearly very talented. It’s just not my thing. This book is still definitely worth reading … but maybe just once.
Representation:
- the main characters are all from an unnamed West or South Asian country (someone said it felt a lot like Pakistan)
- one of the main characters (Nadia) is bi
Exit West is a story about immigration and about the life of one couple during the hardship and terror of war. About what all that does to a relationship and what that does to people and societies as a whole.
It’s beautiful and thought provoking. But I struggled to connect with the characters and their personal story because of the writing style. I’m not trying to be pretentious, and I know the style and its (mis)use of grammar is fully intentional, but reading wordy run-on sentences over and over and over gets exhausting really fast. There’s even one page that consists of a single run-on sentence containing 60 commas (as one reviewer counted).
The writing is also very detached, telling everything and showing almost nothing. We’re told what the characters feel, but there’s no feeling it, no experiencing anything in real time. It’s like reading events from an encyclopedia or wikipedia entry. The story is a good one, but I could never feel it or get absorbed by it.
What I did love were the magical realism elements. It really added a beautiful and almost uplifting element to an otherwise somber story. And the writing style isn’t bad; the author is clearly very talented. It’s just not my thing. This book is still definitely worth reading … but maybe just once.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual harassment