commiebeatle's reviews
159 reviews

Destination Unknown by Agatha Christie

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fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence

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5.0

Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Yeah, I don’t think this author knows how to write? Now Etter has two other previously published novels that I, to be fair, have not (and now never will) read, but I was continuously struck by how uninspired and derivative her writing was while reading this to the point that I had to take my phone out and take photos of certain sentences and passages like a concert because I just couldn’t believe a professional writer would… you know… write something like that.

Most of the prose in this book just feels like she’s copying off current trends; sad girl, body horror-esque. Etter uses three different metaphors throughout the novel; black holes, innards, and fruits (preferrably rotten) - arranged here in descending order in how much they make sense for a story about a girl working at a tech start-up in Silicon Valley.

Having your main character visually, actually see a black hole drifting around next to her at all times as a “metaphor” for depression doesn’t work well because first of all, that is not what depression feels like, second of all, is grotesquely on the nose and (again) uninspired, and third of all, makes me think your main character may have schizophrenia.

The use of physical descriptions for basically everything feels parodical because it is so banal and overdone. Everything is “like a gap in my mouth, red and glistening and wet with blood” or “like the black rotten dent in my left rib” or something. At one point she describes sex as “gradually loosening like a baby tooth” which is nonsensical because in no way does sex feel like that. Which brings me to the many, many, many descriptions of physical sensations that just aren’t possible for a human being to feel. Like “my blood moves through my body like sand” or when she at one point SEES COVID entering “the pale tissue of our lungs” and can HEAR the virus travel through the air like “horses with wild eyes glinting in the sunrise” what do you mean you can SEE and HEAR COVID???? And who would ever be able to hear “the glinting of wild eyes”?? For this to be a plausible observation she has to have supersenses that give her the power to see and hear microparticles and also be able to tell what horses look like and in what kind of weather they are in based on sound alone. Just bizarre.

It just felt like Etter was trying to have her prose sound really lyrical and beautiful but it just doesn’t make sense and becomes soo forced and tacked on after a while. There’s a reference to pomegranates or pomegranate seeds or rotten fruit (sometimes even rotten pomegranate seeds!) every few paragraphs to the point where it just becomes obvious she doesn’t really know how to write anything else. The point of writing isn’t just to make things sound beautiful, but to describe something in the best way possible, to find the exact right words, and Etter just hasn’t gotten to that point. She can’t communicate.

That and also her characters were flat, boring, and insufferable. Cassie, the main character, (her name is so rarely used it feels like she wanted to do a My Year of Rest and Relaxation thing but accidentally left like two instances in there) (also this made me realise how much of a rip off of that novel and Ottessa Moshfegh this is) acts like her life is the most horrific you can imagine, but really she can just quit her corporate job? She can not trick a poor Indian man into working for a soulless company that will exploit him for cheap labour, she can not have an affair with a married man, she can idk MOVE from San Francisco? But the novel acts like life is so unfair and hard for her when it really isn’t, so it was extremely hard to root for a person who doesn’t realise she can idk just quit her job and move to a cheaper city?

anyway this book was bad and the author has no talent byyeeee

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