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nerdyprettythings 's review for:

The Wall by John Lanchester
2.0

This is not a long book and it took me forever to read. At first I thought it might be brilliant that it was boring - life on the wall is boring, and so is the book, and that’s meta as hell. But I’ve never read a book with such extreme stakes (life and death, many times over) that couldn’t get me interested in the narrator’s chances. It took a long time to get any active scenes, and when we finally did, the narrator’s boring thoughts intruded on those, too. At one point, a man is killed in front of him, and the narrator breaks up the would-be suspenseful scene with “I say ‘his’—was he a he anymore? Probably not. But it is difficult to think of a dead body, a body so recently dead, as an ‘it.’” He’s seen many bodies by now. He’s been through a lot. But what should be one of the most impactful scenes of the book gives us this boring thought everyone has had. Lame.