A review by cher_n_books
Infinite Home by Kathleen Alcott
2.0
2.5 stars - It was alright, an average book.
Felt overwritten and slow in places. To illustrate what I mean by overwritten, below is the first chapter in its entirety (all the chapters are short). This writing style can be beautiful when used sparingly but is over the top when it flows continuously.
THE NEIGHBORS HADN’T NOTICED the building’s slow emptying, didn’t register the change until autumn’s lavish colors arrived and leaves sailed through the windows the man hadn’t bothered to shut. The wind captured various vestiges—a sun-bleached postcard covered in outmoded cursive and a chipped plastic refrigerator magnet shaped like a P and a curling photo of a red-haired woman asleep on a couch—and flew the tenants’ things before relinquishing them to the sidewalk.
He was often visible in the evenings, backlit by a feeble table lamp, immobile in a plastic school chair placed against a top-floor sill, and he seemed untouched by any changes in sound or light or weather, an ambulance’s amplifying moan or the snap of a storm on parked cars or the inked saturation of the sky at dusk. Some nights his seat remained empty, and yellows and whites and golds briefly filled each room before darkening and appearing in the next, the lights traveling from the first floor to the third, and the movement of electricity was a quiet spectacle, like the reappearance of hunger after a long illness.
When the cold knock of air came and New York turned white, he closed the windows.
-------------------------------------------
Favorite Quote: “Aging gracefully” was a model much talked about, though Edith doubted anyone ever felt elegant or nimble amid the nearly inescapable fatigue, the persistent mutations of once-simple tasks and the shame thereafter.
First Sentence: The neighbors hadn’t noticed the building’s slow emptying, didn’t register the change until autumn’s lavish colors arrived and leaves sailed through the windows the man hadn’t bothered to shut.
Felt overwritten and slow in places. To illustrate what I mean by overwritten, below is the first chapter in its entirety (all the chapters are short). This writing style can be beautiful when used sparingly but is over the top when it flows continuously.
THE NEIGHBORS HADN’T NOTICED the building’s slow emptying, didn’t register the change until autumn’s lavish colors arrived and leaves sailed through the windows the man hadn’t bothered to shut. The wind captured various vestiges—a sun-bleached postcard covered in outmoded cursive and a chipped plastic refrigerator magnet shaped like a P and a curling photo of a red-haired woman asleep on a couch—and flew the tenants’ things before relinquishing them to the sidewalk.
He was often visible in the evenings, backlit by a feeble table lamp, immobile in a plastic school chair placed against a top-floor sill, and he seemed untouched by any changes in sound or light or weather, an ambulance’s amplifying moan or the snap of a storm on parked cars or the inked saturation of the sky at dusk. Some nights his seat remained empty, and yellows and whites and golds briefly filled each room before darkening and appearing in the next, the lights traveling from the first floor to the third, and the movement of electricity was a quiet spectacle, like the reappearance of hunger after a long illness.
When the cold knock of air came and New York turned white, he closed the windows.
-------------------------------------------
Favorite Quote: “Aging gracefully” was a model much talked about, though Edith doubted anyone ever felt elegant or nimble amid the nearly inescapable fatigue, the persistent mutations of once-simple tasks and the shame thereafter.
First Sentence: The neighbors hadn’t noticed the building’s slow emptying, didn’t register the change until autumn’s lavish colors arrived and leaves sailed through the windows the man hadn’t bothered to shut.