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A review by christopherbabcock
The People's Act of Love by James Meek
2.0
DNFed page 37. As others have said, this book mimics Dostoevsky and Solzhenititsyn, clearing trying to establish itself within the sweeping scope genre of Russian literature. But there's a difference.
Dostoevsky worshipped and sought the goodness of God in his novels, even when the world was bleak and evil. Meek's novel worships the bleak and the evil and seems to revel in God's silence on the endless steppes. While the prose was haunting, I couldn't bring myself to read more. To revel in darkness for the sake of being "gritty" is to become less real, less true, less genuinely human. For it is the moments of light, not darkness, that reveal who we are.
Dostoevsky worshipped and sought the goodness of God in his novels, even when the world was bleak and evil. Meek's novel worships the bleak and the evil and seems to revel in God's silence on the endless steppes. While the prose was haunting, I couldn't bring myself to read more. To revel in darkness for the sake of being "gritty" is to become less real, less true, less genuinely human. For it is the moments of light, not darkness, that reveal who we are.