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DID NOT FINISH
• DNF’d on: November 29th, 2019
• DNF’d on: page 108 (22.5%)
I was not having a good time reading 84K. I don’t like plotless, bleak, literary dystopias so as in an act of self care I decided to stop reading this before my brain melted.
84K is a dystopia about a man called Theo who works for a government organisation that assigns monetary values for crimes. If you’re rich enough you can get away with anything and by virtue of this, being poor in and of itself feels like a crime. In this world a corporation called The Company has taken over every facet of human society and a price tag is put on even the most basic of human necessities. This story is told non linearly and we get to see Tom at various points in his life.
One of my biggest frustrations with this story was how intentionally confusing this book was. We would switch perspectives, have flashbacks, and go on ambling tangents without warning. I got the sense that North was trying to do something with her writing stylistically, but I was too frustrated by the constant narrative jumping to make the effort to parse meaning out of run-on sentences, clipped lines and speech tag-less dialogue
I also have discovered this year that I just don’t enjoy reading grim dystopian novels. 84K’s dystopian world in particular does nothing for me and didn’t say anything I personally needed to hear. I already know that capitalism is bad and didn’t feel the need to read a whole book about it. Every observation that could be gleaned from this world and applied to our own I already knew so it felt pointless to wallow in this bleak suffering montage.
I wish I liked 84K more, but unfortunately I didn’t. I might try to pick up another Claire North book, but that may be a long time coming because this one really left a bad taste in my mouth.
• DNF’d on: page 108 (22.5%)
I was not having a good time reading 84K. I don’t like plotless, bleak, literary dystopias so as in an act of self care I decided to stop reading this before my brain melted.
84K is a dystopia about a man called Theo who works for a government organisation that assigns monetary values for crimes. If you’re rich enough you can get away with anything and by virtue of this, being poor in and of itself feels like a crime. In this world a corporation called The Company has taken over every facet of human society and a price tag is put on even the most basic of human necessities. This story is told non linearly and we get to see Tom at various points in his life.
One of my biggest frustrations with this story was how intentionally confusing this book was. We would switch perspectives, have flashbacks, and go on ambling tangents without warning. I got the sense that North was trying to do something with her writing stylistically, but I was too frustrated by the constant narrative jumping to make the effort to parse meaning out of run-on sentences, clipped lines and speech tag-less dialogue
I also have discovered this year that I just don’t enjoy reading grim dystopian novels. 84K’s dystopian world in particular does nothing for me and didn’t say anything I personally needed to hear. I already know that capitalism is bad and didn’t feel the need to read a whole book about it. Every observation that could be gleaned from this world and applied to our own I already knew so it felt pointless to wallow in this bleak suffering montage.
I wish I liked 84K more, but unfortunately I didn’t. I might try to pick up another Claire North book, but that may be a long time coming because this one really left a bad taste in my mouth.