AUTHOR: Katherine Dunn
CATEGORY: Adult
PUBLISHED: 1989
GENRE: Contemporary
PREMISE: A slice of life sort of book documenting the lives of a family at a traveling carnival...
MY REVIEW: Oh literature crowd, sometimes I do not understand you and your taste. This is yet another one of those times. I've seen this book on all sorts of lists, hailed as super amazing and everything. So I was eager to read it. Unfortunately...I did not get into it. At all.
The writing is gorgeous. This is something the literature crowd does get right usually. They have an amazing ability to spot people with good prose. But here's the thing: just because something has good prose...that doesn't mean it's a good book. The prose here were lovely...the story...not so much. The characters were all jerks who I didn't enjoy spending any time with. There's emotional abuse and all sorts of messed up things happening here. The plot also moves at a snails pace. The ending leaves a lot to be desired as well. A lot of reviews I saw, said the ending was worth all the slowness of the book...I really don't agree with that assessment.
So yeah. I just don't get what people see in this book. All I saw was a book that had a great idea, but not such great execution. Which is a problem I find happens a lot in literature. But from what I can tell this is the kind of book people either really love or really hate. So I would not take my word for things and check it out of the library to see if it's for you.
WHO SHOULD READ: literature fans who don't mind slow books
MY RATING: Two and a half out of Five beautifully written, but boring books
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