Jessica
So... this book is slooooooow. It's mostly descriptive, with SOME conflict here and there but uh, mostly no. In fact, there are way more potential sources of conflict than actual sources of conflict.
As well, the start of the book kind of antagonised me, seeming to be more a polemic in the form of a novel than a novel itself. This feeling DEFINITELY went away, maybe a quarter of the way in (I forget exactly). The thing that irritates me is when writers create characters with perfect politics, and then make the whole book about this skilled political analyst existing in a particular situation. Given that the narrator is a late twentieth-century woman existing in an oppressive, pseudoreligious patriarchy, I got worried that that was what I was in for. But I wasn't. I was relieved.
Once that fear went away, I could better enjoy the flashbacks to life before, and especially the chapter that went through how the system changed. I am unconvinced that the explanation for how things changed is likely, but it didn't irritate me too much. As I said, there isn't really much conflict that over arches everything – there are more these flashes of conflict, especially in the flashbacks or in retrospect. At 81% done I had no idea where the climax was going to come from; at 92% no idea... then at 94% the narrative ended suddenly and I was really confused.
The epilogue contextualises things a bit better but I feel like SOME of that context could have been IN THE NOVEL (in particular, it is never mentioned even once – as I recall – that this is a recording on a cassette tape. She mentioned once that she was monologuing to herself, I think, so I thought the novel was supposed to represent the stream-of-consciousness from her head).
I actually really liked the epilogue. As a history student, once I read this series of letters by a particular woman, and there's no record of what happened to her after the letters cease either – so it's like, there's this whole story but some of the context is missing and we have to guess. Either way, it's an interesting form, to write in the form of historical documents – even if it's a bit late to be all, “By the way, that's what I was going for,” in the epilogue of the book I think.
Anyway! I did enjoy this overall, but it didn't grip me. If half-stars were a thing I might give it three and a half, but I'm not feeling very generous today, haha. So that's that.
So... this book is slooooooow. It's mostly descriptive, with SOME conflict here and there but uh, mostly no. In fact, there are way more potential sources of conflict than actual sources of conflict.
As well, the start of the book kind of antagonised me, seeming to be more a polemic in the form of a novel than a novel itself. This feeling DEFINITELY went away, maybe a quarter of the way in (I forget exactly). The thing that irritates me is when writers create characters with perfect politics, and then make the whole book about this skilled political analyst existing in a particular situation. Given that the narrator is a late twentieth-century woman existing in an oppressive, pseudoreligious patriarchy, I got worried that that was what I was in for. But I wasn't. I was relieved.
Once that fear went away, I could better enjoy the flashbacks to life before, and especially the chapter that went through how the system changed. I am unconvinced that the explanation for how things changed is likely, but it didn't irritate me too much. As I said, there isn't really much conflict that over arches everything – there are more these flashes of conflict, especially in the flashbacks or in retrospect. At 81% done I had no idea where the climax was going to come from; at 92% no idea... then at 94% the narrative ended suddenly and I was really confused.
The epilogue contextualises things a bit better but I feel like SOME of that context could have been IN THE NOVEL (in particular, it is never mentioned even once – as I recall – that this is a recording on a cassette tape. She mentioned once that she was monologuing to herself, I think, so I thought the novel was supposed to represent the stream-of-consciousness from her head).
I actually really liked the epilogue. As a history student, once I read this series of letters by a particular woman, and there's no record of what happened to her after the letters cease either – so it's like, there's this whole story but some of the context is missing and we have to guess. Either way, it's an interesting form, to write in the form of historical documents – even if it's a bit late to be all, “By the way, that's what I was going for,” in the epilogue of the book I think.
Anyway! I did enjoy this overall, but it didn't grip me. If half-stars were a thing I might give it three and a half, but I'm not feeling very generous today, haha. So that's that.