Scan barcode
A review by shruberry
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
4.0
“People are full of surprise, even for themselves, if they have been stirred enough.”
I can't exactly place my feelings for this book right now, I mean of course I love the writing style, it's beautiful, I love Giovanni even though he might be a little sexist, I even loved Hella; but I have never in my life not really liked the narrator before, yeah I understand that he was confused but in this book of only 154 pages he seemed to have hurt so many people all because of his own wrong decisions, David does not seem to understand himself and I felt very sorry Hella too *sigh*
Actually I'd like to hear the story from her POV, she seems like an interesting woman with a lot going on in her head. Hella sounds like a person who likes to drink and read and understands stuff in silence.
And OMG Giovanni seemed to have a really hard life didn't he, I felt so bad for him, whenever I thought it couldn't get any worse for him BAM there's a sad past or again David hurt the poor guy somehow *sigh*
But I did enjoy this book a lot and it has so many lines I wanna quote like:
“Perhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both.”
“Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore”
“I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.” (I was not expecting to find something so relatable here!)
I can't exactly place my feelings for this book right now, I mean of course I love the writing style, it's beautiful, I love Giovanni even though he might be a little sexist, I even loved Hella; but I have never in my life not really liked the narrator before, yeah I understand that he was confused but in this book of only 154 pages he seemed to have hurt so many people all because of his own wrong decisions, David does not seem to understand himself and I felt very sorry Hella too *sigh*
Actually I'd like to hear the story from her POV, she seems like an interesting woman with a lot going on in her head. Hella sounds like a person who likes to drink and read and understands stuff in silence.
And OMG Giovanni seemed to have a really hard life didn't he, I felt so bad for him, whenever I thought it couldn't get any worse for him BAM there's a sad past or again David hurt the poor guy somehow *sigh*
But I did enjoy this book a lot and it has so many lines I wanna quote like:
“Perhaps he is a fool or a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both.”
“Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore”
“I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.” (I was not expecting to find something so relatable here!)