Nika
It's a good book, but not a fiver. Maybe 4.5?
You ever go to a techno party and the DJ's playing this great, measured set with impeccable track selection, robust transitions, and towards the end of the set they start to drop the beat, and you slowly realise that it has all been leading to this, to lift the set to the absolute peak and then do the biggest drop. In a way it's flexing DJ muscles, a total show-off. The beat gets faster and faster, narrower and narrower, and then finally it drops.
And lo and behold, it's not really that satisfying. Yes, it was well orchestrated, flashed out set, but all these theatrics took away something vital from the performance. You feel like you're at a techno festival, not an intimate club where sets should feel like a long train ride, with change of textures, moods, and emotions, without the roller coaster tricks.
That is how I felt reading this book - all this writing, characters, different writing styles, manipulated and forced just like puppets to culminate like a shoddy beat drop in the end. No bueno.
It's a tome of longing, weaknesses, perseverance and ultimately new beginnings—a pivotal moment in the series. It feels like that fifth part is the culmination of the series - Karl Ove's life, as he writes it, seems to conclude here. What lies ahead, in the final part, will be just a look back, a summary on his life after the fame came to him. But let's see.
It's a somber read, more so than its predecessors, yet there's solace in witnessing the protagonist's struggles—we find kinship in confronting our own demons. In a way, it's a motivational book.
It's still as great as the previous parts but this time there are many cute and awkward trials and tribulations around losing virginity, and just when you think we'll have to get to the next book to see Karl Ove become a man, the story ends with glorious, life-affirming shagging (yes, “shagging” is the word I'm going with).
This is Ms. Keegan's first collection of short stories, and reading these back as a person who's read her recent novellas, I found stories are of varying quality (yes, that's the word i'm going for). She's still in search of her voice, style, and footing, but still: there are a handful of stories here that are like a whiplash to the reader.
Ms. Morozova probably has the most unique sense of humor coupled with talent of creating compact, absurdly funny scenes from the lives of Homo Sovieticus.
Unfortunately what work well with video animations, falls flat on the paper. The trademark voice over that she provides is sorely missing on the pages of this short book. It is still funny, but only around 40%.
Even after almost 20 years since they were written, the essays, especially “Contemplations on Peace”, pulse with spirit of time. Its diagnosis of current affairs of Israeli-Palestine conflict reads as a calcified prophecy, and can be read as a report on matters as well as a recipe to solve this decades old discord.
