To my dismay, this book is neither a classic, nor is it really a novel. At most, it is a collection of short stories that are linked to each other. Each chapter is narrated either by Christian, Anke, Linde, or Martin, and each chapter tells another moment in their lives. The moments often coincide, but they do not tell a singular plot that could be traced from beginning to end. To be honest, this was a disappointment for me. I personally am not a huge fan of short stories because I want to have time to sit down and read each individual one, not sit down and read five or six at a time. I feel like, when I rocket through many stories, I begin to become desensitized to the plot because I'm watching a thousand mini-plots zoom by at lightning speeds! It's just too much for me!
On top of that, this book is not advertised as a short story, or a collection of related narratives that don't tell one singular story. This led to some SERIOUS confusion on my part. For the first 50 pages, I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I expected a single story, not a thousand little ones, so I read it believing that I would find a single plot line. I didn't even expect the characters to change each chapter, so I couldn't really tell what was going on for a REALLY long time. By the time I did figure it out, I was already frustrated with the book. This is a really frustrating problem for me, because it has nothing to do with the author or his writing style, it has to do with the way the book was marketed. If Penguin Books had described this as an anthology or a collection of related stories or memories, I would've enjoyed the book more (but maybe not much more).
Other than some serious marketing issues, this book was fairly confusing. I can't really give you a summary because it's a bunch of stories and I'm way to lazy to tell you about every individual chapter, but I will talk about more technical issues than issues of plot for your convenience. Let's start with the narrators.
I hated all the narrators. All. Of. Them. Don't get me wrong, as characters in a horror collection they were fantastic! They were creepy as hell, murderous, and totally okay with doing some really fucked up stuff. My real issue is the fact that EVERY CHARACTER SOUNDS THE SAME! The only way to know who the narrator was for each chapter was to go to the first page of the chapter and find their name as the title of the chapter. This lack of voice caused me to be really confused and to read the book assuming that there was only one narrator because there was nothing telling me the narrators were different (except, of course, the name that was used for a chapter title. Guess I'm not super observant). When I did realize my mistake, I found myself having to flip back to the chapter title to see who was narrating because, otherwise, I could not figure out who it was.
Each narrator had a family and a background (which is good) but I honestly am not clear on any of their backgrounds (which is bad). This is due, in part, to the number of narrators. I can't remember how many siblings (if any) Linde has because I'm too busy trying to remember what all these narrators are doing. Kiesbye's writing style also made it difficult because he is not a fan of blatantly stating anything about his narrators. While normally this is juvenile (unless done well), it is very hard to have a story about many narrators and still not say something like "I have five sisters" and then name them all so I can figure out what the hell is going on.
Not all of my feedback is negative though! I did like the stories a lot, and I love how ambiguous the time period was. I know that the town, called Devil's Moor in German, is in Germany, but I couldn't figure out what time period it took place in. There were cars, but you travelled everywhere by boat. There was limos, but no electricity or phones. It seemed as if the town existed outside of time, completely isolated from the rest of the world, giving it an impossible-to-escape vibe. I loved it. It made each story way creepier and the reader was more disoriented. Honestly, I think the time ambiguity really saved the book.
Alright, let's break it down:
The Good:
- Time Ambiguity
- Creepy AF
- Characters have no morals
- Town is hella creepy
- Short
The Bad:
- Marketing insinuated this was a novel, not a collection of short stories
- Stories not connected enough
- Characters have vague backgrounds
- Hard to keep track of all the characters
- Confusing at times
- Narrators have no voices
- At times, the book is boring
Now, let's see the review! Drumroll please!
I give this book,
1.5 Pizza slices! I couldn't decide between 1 and 2, so I split the difference. In the end, the book was too confusing, too boring, and the narrators just weren't written well enough. If Penguin Books ever changes how they market this book, I'll bump it up a full slice. (Yes, I did edit this photo of two pizza slices. No, I don't have photoshop. It turned out super realistic XD).
No comments:
Post a Comment