sarahxify's Reviews (703)

 This is about the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in the 1930s and mainly follows some of the Ethiopians who are fighting against them. I knew basically nothing about this war, so it was a really instructive novel for me to pick up. It was an unsettling read, but I found the characters compelling and highly believable, which kept me reading with interest. 

Mengiste has other bits of storytelling woven in throughout the novel, all of which I really liked and helped to paint a picture. I particularly liked her descriptions of the photos that were taken, she has an amazing way with words and can really give you a strong image of what the photos looked like. I also really liked the inlcusion of the POV from the Italian colonel Carlo Fucelli - without this I would have really struggled to follow the plot of the novel. 

However, I did find the plot dragged a little, and sometimes the prose left me quite confused as to what was actually going on. The writing is beautiful but at times, perhaps at the expense of a really compelling story. 

For fans of: 

To be honest there was not much I liked about this. 

The story never came together in a way I found convincing. The characters were all pretty dislikeable, but in a way that seemed to be there purely to create antagonism in the plot. I didn't believe any of the characters, and even their motivations seemed to be a little ridiculous. I was wondering at some point if it was actually supposed to be satire, as the characters all seemed like caricatures of real people. 

For fans of:

This was very readable and easy to sit through. There was some interesting commentary on violence and misogyny, although I am sure that I missed most of what Mackintosh was getting at.  However, it was very slow, and didn't really pull me in. Also it was too vague in its execution for me; I need stories to be a little more fleshed out and less abstract than this was. 

For fans of:
* Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore
* The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton 

I am nearly halfway through and finding the story quite flat. The characters aren't particularly engaging and feel a bit unoriginal to me. There are bits and pieces of really beautiful writing in this though, so I will still give The Vanishing Half a go at some point in the future. 

Read for The Bookcast Club podcast - check out the episode here: https://www.thebookcastclub.com/podcast/episode/4d1abe34/32-book-club-mr-loverman-by-bernadine-evaristo

 This was beautiful. A story about Jocelyn and Martin, who start off together but are eventually torn apart by circumstance. They each feel so much grief that they can no longer connect with each other, although they each desperately want to.

Eventually they separate, and then you follow them individually as each learns to live without the other. It's an exploration of grief, of guilt, of relationships.

This story and characters has stayed with me in the days after I have read this. Maybe the first writer I've ever come across who I would even slightly compare to Donna Tartt.