Das mangelnde Licht

I am of two minds on this. Firstly, this needs to be edited down. It's not a 3-4 generation saga like [b:The Eighth Life 41071389 The Eighth Life Nino Haratischwili https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1541145402l/41071389.SY75.jpg 42466516] so maybe it doesn't need to be as long. I would edit down the melodramatic and occasionally repetitive narrative style, the plot can stay. And I would absolutely not insert clunky bracketed “she told me this word for word” statements in detailed descriptions of events that the first person narrator absolutely did not attend. So, during a large portion of the book I was distracted by being annoyed at the narrative voice. But, and that's point two, by the end I was still hooked on the story. Of growing up in Georgia's tumultuous 80ies and 90ies, of the youth's lack of hope and their urge to combat society's corruption with violence and crime.