I wanted this book to be good. I would say better, but I was so annoyed as I was reading it, I couldn’t even muster up enough. It’s perfectly well written throughout most of the novel, but I started getting my early sense of the cracks. But I started to get really annoyed. The book is a lot like a mix between Matilda and Exit West…so elements of emigre literature and statelessness and then the love and redemptive power of books. But then, but then, […]
We learn his banal secrets. We watch as he’s led, shackled and sweaty, into a brightly lit courtroom as someone seated several feet higher peers down unsmiling, raps a gavel, and speaks, at long last, every syllable of his birth name.
This is both a strange book and a strange book to read at this given moment. It’s clear that there will be a rushed second edition with additional updates, and I bet that book will be a more satisfying read. I should start off that this is one of those books that I worry that my reading it will make the internet mad at me. This book is very interesting, and mostly doesn’t hold together. When a fiction author dies, and they leave an unfinished […]
If you have love, even plain cold water is sweet.
Something about the cover of this novel made me think it would be a little more “Memoiry” by which I mean clearly written for a very broad audience, skewing younger. This LOOKS like the kind of book I remember being given a bunch of times as a kid of someone growing up in a very different world than my own in order to show me the plurality of experiences. And maybe it kind of is. But what I can’t help notice is how much my […]
What is adolescence without trash?
Book 1: Men at Arms This book starts off with a discussion of the localized history of a estate belonging to a wealthy English family, all of which sets the scene for the kind of historical and cultural and familial draw the role and life of the soldier has on the protagonist of this novel. Somewhere between the Sword of Damocles and Chekhov’s rifle, the titular Sword of Honour (the trilogy’s if not this novel’s name) hangs over the family providing fate, guidance, and doom. […]
The American dream is a double-edged sword in that those who are able to carve out their own destiny are also hard-pressed not to condemn those who get struck between the cracks.
I was kind of surprised by the rating on Goodreads for this one (3.75), which is better than average, but not by much. It’s a perfectly good book, but there’s a real misconception of what this book is, and what this book isn’t. I think part of the problem is that the title of the book, both the use of the term “White Trash” which never should have been used, and the “untold” part, which is not exactly true suggest something salacious and poppy, and […]
“Don’t put me off, Anna. Are you afraid of being chaotic?”
The structure, the writing, and the vision of this novel are absolutely brilliant. At times, the complexity of these three components can make this a difficult novel and even a frustrating one. One section might be incredibly emotionally complex and even harrowing in some ways, gutting in its own right, and then the next might be dry or ironic or amusing. The novel itself is chunked out into six different components. A frame narrative taking place in the present which is called here “Free Women,” […]
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