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377 reviews by:
snarkhunting
slow-paced
This book was nothing more than verbal flatulence masquerading as something intellectual.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Moderate: Rape, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Grief, Death of parent
There were, in fact, once dogs here. Mums bought a dog with them on the Long Voyage.
Wait. Mums bought a dog with dogs? Did the narrator mean brought? Okay. What's one typo? Allow me to answer that: it was more than just a typo.
To begin with, I'm irked by the increasing prevalence of first-person narratives found in works of fiction. Additionally, I have yet to encounter a work which tells more than it shows that I find engaging. If different characters are telling a story, then the characters should seem different; a character's point of view and ways of expressing themself should be unique to them. Nowhere throughout the portion of this work that I read, though, would I have been able to tell the characters apart without their names appearing as chapter titles. Imagine my reaction to one of them, a child, 41 years later than the last one, commenting like this on their divergent use of language:
My teachers at school have said that my phrasal dictionary is a fitting tribute to life in the Colony...
Maybe there is also projection in the way that Mum sees my dictionary. She thinks of it as an attempt to resolve my problems with language, rather than as it really is a remedy for the unacknowledged irrationalities of her own generation.
Now imagine that coming after not only typos, but also the misuse of words known as thesaurus abuse.
The Land Rover croaks as it starts up, and Kenzie, sitting in the back, on one of the bench seats that run over the wheel arches, shakes her head in wonder. "A combustion engine?" she says. Mum nods. Kenzie's been in the vehicle before, but years ago when she was a tiny giggling girl in a denim smock, impervious to the fuel this strange vehicle ran on.
Did the narrator mean indifferent to?
The later character's commentary was definitely not a clever way to make excuses for the distractions.
I don't know how things may have corrected themselves later in the story because I dropped it about a quarter of the way through. (Maybe the characters are actually robots, or something.) It's one of those works that made me feel like reading it would be a waste of my time.
