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joshsharp's review
4.0
What a strange book. 3.5 rounded up?
This is a book that reflects on death and our relationship with it, in various guises — the elderly waiting for the end in nursing homes, the suicidal, those who kill for sport, those who seem to be a little unmoored from life, and even those who have died and yet persist. Plus, of course, the people who are still "quick". Carter's wife Ginger died in an accident and still haunts his bedroom each evening. Is he seeing visions or is she really there? His daughter Annabel has made friends with two other teenage girls, Corvus and Alice; together they are all motherless, each with their own relationship to it. There's also a precocious 8-year-old who likes pouring sand in her hair, a slimy pianist guy who pretends he's much younger, and a man who's had a stroke and now feels he lives with an angry monkey occupying his brain.
The surreal feeling of the book is one I enjoyed immensely, and I highlighted many passages and clever turns of phrase. Things happen that are not quite real, and even the plausible has an air of unreality. Still, this is the sort of book where not a lot happens, it's mostly a vehicle for musing on life and death. To me, the book asks, what is life and what are we doing with it? What's the point of living, only to end up dead? Isn't everything a bit silly? And I think this is done quite well across the various characters and circumstances. The author's voice is witty and sardonic and her outlook is not particularly upbeat.
"All souls lonely, but what did it matter? Couldn't matter less that all souls were lonely. Was in a soul's nature never to be satisfied until infusion achieved with all. Price was obliteration, which was unacceptable. Though only on one level; on another level, perfectly okay. The stillness to which all returns, this is reality, objective reality being nothing. No wonder everything is so nonsensical."
The characters were mostly strongly portrayed as individuals, and speaking with their own voices even if those voices said ridiculous, precocious things. Bad things happened to them, plots were advanced, but also not a lot really happened. Mostly that was okay but at times it dragged, which is the main reason it's not a full four stars.
Still, the writing was excellent, and I want to read more from the author.
This is a book that reflects on death and our relationship with it, in various guises — the elderly waiting for the end in nursing homes, the suicidal, those who kill for sport, those who seem to be a little unmoored from life, and even those who have died and yet persist. Plus, of course, the people who are still "quick". Carter's wife Ginger died in an accident and still haunts his bedroom each evening. Is he seeing visions or is she really there? His daughter Annabel has made friends with two other teenage girls, Corvus and Alice; together they are all motherless, each with their own relationship to it. There's also a precocious 8-year-old who likes pouring sand in her hair, a slimy pianist guy who pretends he's much younger, and a man who's had a stroke and now feels he lives with an angry monkey occupying his brain.
The surreal feeling of the book is one I enjoyed immensely, and I highlighted many passages and clever turns of phrase. Things happen that are not quite real, and even the plausible has an air of unreality. Still, this is the sort of book where not a lot happens, it's mostly a vehicle for musing on life and death. To me, the book asks, what is life and what are we doing with it? What's the point of living, only to end up dead? Isn't everything a bit silly? And I think this is done quite well across the various characters and circumstances. The author's voice is witty and sardonic and her outlook is not particularly upbeat.
"All souls lonely, but what did it matter? Couldn't matter less that all souls were lonely. Was in a soul's nature never to be satisfied until infusion achieved with all. Price was obliteration, which was unacceptable. Though only on one level; on another level, perfectly okay. The stillness to which all returns, this is reality, objective reality being nothing. No wonder everything is so nonsensical."
The characters were mostly strongly portrayed as individuals, and speaking with their own voices even if those voices said ridiculous, precocious things. Bad things happened to them, plots were advanced, but also not a lot really happened. Mostly that was okay but at times it dragged, which is the main reason it's not a full four stars.
Still, the writing was excellent, and I want to read more from the author.
doddlegyver's review
challenging
funny
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
jamelynreads25's review
4.0
I would give this a 3.5. Williams' writing reminds me of a southwestern Flannery O'Connor without her cohesiveness. Three girls, Alice, Corvus and Annabel, have recently suffered a loss and are navigating the summer together. Their experiences are intertwined with those of several quirky characters-- a pianist, a big game hunter, a man visited by his wife's ghost, a stroke survivor and a quick-witted little girl. It primarily touches on the connection between life and death, ecological problems and the relationship between man and animal.
I thought it was an interesting meditation on death and grieving, but the style is too dry for me. I found the characters to be strange but not compelling, and every phrase is philosophical.
I thought it was an interesting meditation on death and grieving, but the style is too dry for me. I found the characters to be strange but not compelling, and every phrase is philosophical.
litanydeshincoe's review
Like little women but for the strange and unusual…kind of, not really. Loved it. Read for Arizona.
josqmo's review
dark
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
A meandering observation of where life ends and death begins—how we pretend to keep the dead alive, how the living sometimes want to be dead and the dead want to be alive. An interesting premise, but I didn’t find much beyond that.
There were stretches of enjoyable writing, but the overarching story lacked cohesion. I was never able to gain traction with a main plot/objective. Characters came and went without unique purpose.
From a writing standpoint, Williams over-deploys vocab words to the point that it took me out of the text. I found it especially frustrating how unbelievable the children’s dialogue could be. The whole stilted dialogue thing is a trope that’s worked for other 1990s/2000s era writers, but I thought it was a swing and a miss in this case.
There were stretches of enjoyable writing, but the overarching story lacked cohesion. I was never able to gain traction with a main plot/objective. Characters came and went without unique purpose.
From a writing standpoint, Williams over-deploys vocab words to the point that it took me out of the text. I found it especially frustrating how unbelievable the children’s dialogue could be. The whole stilted dialogue thing is a trope that’s worked for other 1990s/2000s era writers, but I thought it was a swing and a miss in this case.
halestormz's review
challenging
dark
funny
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
ninakinsmn's review
5.0
This is a delightfully odd book, with a strange cast of characters and an occasionally baffling plot, written with verve and deliciously subversive prose. I can’t quite describe what I just read, but I know that I liked it.