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A review by thebookarchaeologist
Indelicacy by Amina Cain
dark
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
The more I think about this book, the more I'm fascinated by what I had read.
This is an incredibly haunting, intriguing story with a narrator/main character that is so aloof, inaccessible and reticent - and all of it willingly. And, because everything else in this story is indeterminate - the setting, the time, even the main character's name (for most of the book) - you realise that you, as the reader, are also being held at arm's length.
It's as if she, as an aspiring writer, refuses to indulge us with more detail, more information, more insight into who she is and other things we might otherwise demand or expect from her and whatever story she has to tell.
Instead, she tells us what she wants to tell us while also indulging her whims, her curiosity and, eventually, her burgeoning creativity and pursuit of freedom. And in the end, she is still a stranger - right to the end of the book - but it is of her own design. Yet it hardly seems to matter, because what she does happen to tell us throughout, in deceptively simplistic prose and observations, happens to also be incredibly revealing and insightful. But not because we get to learn more about her, but more so because we actually start to identify with her.
This is an incredibly haunting, intriguing story with a narrator/main character that is so aloof, inaccessible and reticent - and all of it willingly. And, because everything else in this story is indeterminate - the setting, the time, even the main character's name (for most of the book) - you realise that you, as the reader, are also being held at arm's length.
It's as if she, as an aspiring writer, refuses to indulge us with more detail, more information, more insight into who she is and other things we might otherwise demand or expect from her and whatever story she has to tell.
Instead, she tells us what she wants to tell us while also indulging her whims, her curiosity and, eventually, her burgeoning creativity and pursuit of freedom. And in the end, she is still a stranger - right to the end of the book - but it is of her own design. Yet it hardly seems to matter, because what she does happen to tell us throughout, in deceptively simplistic prose and observations, happens to also be incredibly revealing and insightful. But not because we get to learn more about her, but more so because we actually start to identify with her.
Content Warnings
Minor: Sexual content