I completely understand why this book is featured on so many Must Read lists - it challenges genre norms, questions reality and criticises modern society. All the things that make it such a widely suggested book are what made it inaccessible and cumbersome for me.

Though engaging at parts, I found the disjointed timeline incredibly hard to follow. The characters were distant and remote, hardly the empathetic figures readers are used to. The complete alienation of the reader serves a purpose in how the morality of the novel and its purpose is presented.

Ultimately, this novel is well worth a read. Though I wouldn’t want to read it again. It is, to a point, engaging and provoking but it is not at all an easy read and takes as much energy as you are able to give to it.