You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
Originally posted at The Wandering Fangirl.
The Glimpse is an odd little book. Under the dystopian genre, you can do just about anything you want to create a dystopian world. Make love a disease? Sure. Have people die at age 20/25? Why not! Create a religious state? Go for it! But you have to be careful, well-researched, and most importantly, conscientious when you pick a topic that is sensitive to many readers. [b:When She Woke|11045709|When She Woke|Hillary Jordan|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1306504418s/11045709.jpg|15966434] treated religion very well, presenting both good and bad sides without feeling like the author was talking down to the reader from a soapbox. [b:Delirium|7686667|Delirium (Delirium, #1)|Lauren Oliver|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1298079937s/7686667.jpg|10342808] did a good job in showing how the heroine is shaped by the dystopian environment she grew up in, as did [b:Wither|8525590|Wither (The Chemical Garden, #1)|Lauren DeStefano|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327878510s/8525590.jpg|13392566].
Sadly, The Glimpse doesn’t do exactly what it should; it simply beats the reader over the head with “crazies” and “pures” and mental asylums as we follow Ana’s journey. Like most heroines in dystopian YA lately, she’s grown up with an idea of how the world should work, and that should be enough to forgive her for the way she looks down on those with mental illness.
But it isn’t.
Ana is an incredibly frustrating character to follow. From the start, we’re with her as her whole world shatters when she’s told the truth about her mother: that she was a crazy, and Ana was a carrier as well. Except…nothing happens to her. Not until her future husband is kidnapped and she suddenly makes the decision to leave her gated community for the dirty, crazy streets of London. Despite her adventures on her own, from meeting and falling for a supposed terrorist to admitting herself into a horrifying mental asylum, Ana doesn’t seem to grow. Her experiences open her eyes to what the world is really like, yes, but as far as I felt, she never really has a light bulb moment. She doesn’t really change, and that’s not fun to read.
I’d talk about the secondary characters, expect none of them really stuck in my mind or stood out. Jasper was bland and Cole, the supposed terrorist she falls in love with, wasn’t any better.
As for the plot, I couldn’t care one bit. It didn’t move along as fast as it could have, and everything crawls to a stop when Ana ends up in a mental asylum for reasons I won’t go into because they might be considered spoilers. The whole mental asylum section…I have a problem with abuse perpetrated simply for the sake of a) making the character suffer, and b) being shocking.
And after all she goes through, does Ana even think ‘hey, that mental asylum was awful, maybe I should do something about it’, or I don’t know, think something like that? Nope.
That was my main problem with the book — for all that Ana goes through, it doesn’t seem to change her as a character. She sees the world in a different light and can’t stand her situation anymore, but she’s still the same boring character she is at the start of the novel, and I didn’t care less how the novel ended, just that it did.
The Glimpse is an odd little book. Under the dystopian genre, you can do just about anything you want to create a dystopian world. Make love a disease? Sure. Have people die at age 20/25? Why not! Create a religious state? Go for it! But you have to be careful, well-researched, and most importantly, conscientious when you pick a topic that is sensitive to many readers. [b:When She Woke|11045709|When She Woke|Hillary Jordan|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1306504418s/11045709.jpg|15966434] treated religion very well, presenting both good and bad sides without feeling like the author was talking down to the reader from a soapbox. [b:Delirium|7686667|Delirium (Delirium, #1)|Lauren Oliver|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1298079937s/7686667.jpg|10342808] did a good job in showing how the heroine is shaped by the dystopian environment she grew up in, as did [b:Wither|8525590|Wither (The Chemical Garden, #1)|Lauren DeStefano|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327878510s/8525590.jpg|13392566].
Sadly, The Glimpse doesn’t do exactly what it should; it simply beats the reader over the head with “crazies” and “pures” and mental asylums as we follow Ana’s journey. Like most heroines in dystopian YA lately, she’s grown up with an idea of how the world should work, and that should be enough to forgive her for the way she looks down on those with mental illness.
But it isn’t.
Ana is an incredibly frustrating character to follow. From the start, we’re with her as her whole world shatters when she’s told the truth about her mother: that she was a crazy, and Ana was a carrier as well. Except…nothing happens to her. Not until her future husband is kidnapped and she suddenly makes the decision to leave her gated community for the dirty, crazy streets of London. Despite her adventures on her own, from meeting and falling for a supposed terrorist to admitting herself into a horrifying mental asylum, Ana doesn’t seem to grow. Her experiences open her eyes to what the world is really like, yes, but as far as I felt, she never really has a light bulb moment. She doesn’t really change, and that’s not fun to read.
I’d talk about the secondary characters, expect none of them really stuck in my mind or stood out. Jasper was bland and Cole, the supposed terrorist she falls in love with, wasn’t any better.
As for the plot, I couldn’t care one bit. It didn’t move along as fast as it could have, and everything crawls to a stop when Ana ends up in a mental asylum for reasons I won’t go into because they might be considered spoilers. The whole mental asylum section…I have a problem with abuse perpetrated simply for the sake of a) making the character suffer, and b) being shocking.
And after all she goes through, does Ana even think ‘hey, that mental asylum was awful, maybe I should do something about it’, or I don’t know, think something like that? Nope.
That was my main problem with the book — for all that Ana goes through, it doesn’t seem to change her as a character. She sees the world in a different light and can’t stand her situation anymore, but she’s still the same boring character she is at the start of the novel, and I didn’t care less how the novel ended, just that it did.