A review by carly276
Taipei by Tao Lin

1.0

This book is unreadable. The prose style is absolutely horrible and the main character is both inaccessible and unlikable. The sentences are unfailingly long, convoluted, and aggressively pretentious. As an example: "He listened to the layered murmur of wind against leaves, familiarly and gently disorienting as a terrestrial sound track, reminding people of their own lives, then opened his MacBook– sideways, like a hardcover book– and looked at the internet, lying on his side, with his right ear pressed into his pillow, as if, unable to return to sleep, at least in position to hear what, in his absence, might be happening there." It is all like that and therefore becomes incredibly monotonous and dull. There is very little plot, and what there is gets lost in the terrible writing style so that the pacing is awful and there is no reason to care about any of the characters or what is happening. A scene where the main character goes out for burritos with acquaintances is given the same treatment as a pivotal breakup and gives the impression of a robotic, uninteresting main character. Save yourself and skip this.