A review by servemethesky
Whiteout Conditions by Tariq Shah
3.0
Damn, this is such a hard book to rate. I was absolutely loving this, certain it was going to be 5 stars, until the last 17 pages.
Shah's writing is impeccable. It's sharp and incisive. As much as Ant, the narrator, professes to love funerals, you can tell something is off. We gradually learn that everyone he loves has died--his mother, he's estranged from his father, his ex-girlfriend who he once thought he would marry, and now his childhood best friend's younger cousin.
This is the kind of novel people describe as 'gritty.' It's harsh, it's hard to read, and it's hard to look away, too. There are some really beautiful lines in here that made me stop and go "oooooooh."
I've come to appreciate content warnings for books more as I've gotten older. I recently read a [a:Talia Hibbert|17088554|Talia Hibbert|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1544037896p2/17088554.jpg] book where in an author's note at the start, she says something like, "This book depicts parental abandonment and OCD, I've done my best to represent them with care, please be mindful of these themes as a reader going into this book." Bam. Easy. That's all you have to do! No spoilers.
In the final 17 pages of the book, a dog is brutally, violently tortured and nearly killed. It's quite graphic and was so gruesome I could barely go on. I pushed through to find out if the dog lives. Unclear at the end, but the last paragraph was a beautiful bit of writing. Would've liked a warning about the dog torture (might have skipped the book honestly). I wonder if the book could've had the same impact without it... the beautiful ending was hard to appreciate after reading the dog torture.
Shah's writing is impeccable. It's sharp and incisive. As much as Ant, the narrator, professes to love funerals, you can tell something is off. We gradually learn that everyone he loves has died--his mother, he's estranged from his father, his ex-girlfriend who he once thought he would marry, and now his childhood best friend's younger cousin.
This is the kind of novel people describe as 'gritty.' It's harsh, it's hard to read, and it's hard to look away, too. There are some really beautiful lines in here that made me stop and go "oooooooh."
I've come to appreciate content warnings for books more as I've gotten older. I recently read a [a:Talia Hibbert|17088554|Talia Hibbert|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1544037896p2/17088554.jpg] book where in an author's note at the start, she says something like, "This book depicts parental abandonment and OCD, I've done my best to represent them with care, please be mindful of these themes as a reader going into this book." Bam. Easy. That's all you have to do! No spoilers.
In the final 17 pages of the book, a dog is brutally, violently tortured and nearly killed. It's quite graphic and was so gruesome I could barely go on. I pushed through to find out if the dog lives. Unclear at the end, but the last paragraph was a beautiful bit of writing. Would've liked a warning about the dog torture (might have skipped the book honestly). I wonder if the book could've had the same impact without it... the beautiful ending was hard to appreciate after reading the dog torture.