S. Weaver

Dreary

Revisado: 04-08-21

I can’t imagine why I listened to this entire book. It was boring, the narrator was grating, and I learned very little I didn’t already know (this in spite of the fact that I haven’t watched a single episode of Keeping Up).

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could really use better narration

Revisado: 11-12-18

The book was good, interesting, and the right length for the content.But the narration...come on, really...she could learn to say the various foreign phrases and names in the book without having to dub them in separately, later. This probably shouldn't bother me that much, but it did.

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The writing is so beautiful!

Revisado: 11-01-18

I find memoirs just generally interesting, so bear that in mind, but this one was beautifully written and very evocative of the place and time it recounts.

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well, that's 15 hours I'll never get back

Revisado: 06-01-16

I liked the narrator! But the book was pretty awful, I can't imagine why it won the Booker Prize. I am of course familiar with books that do not follow a clear chronology but rather jump about in an individual's life to give an impressionistic picture of the whole life and to let its events, experiences, and character unfold in interesting ways. But the technique did not succeed here. Indeed, the principal character faded out for a long section of the book, as did plot elements associated with him, and when the focus came back to him, he was a different person: not different from the person he was before these events during the war, but different from the person before, during, and after the war as described before this long dreary section during the war. I think we were supposed to find him complex and profound, but I thought him merely unlikable. He appeared to me to be a closet misogynist, his "one great love" being a cover for ceaseless disrespect and dislike of women. Books like this tempt me to write my own, because I'm pretty sure that I could sound sufficiently alienated to have people regard my fiction as deeply literary.

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Gotta love David Mitchell

Revisado: 12-06-15

I'm no fan of ghost stories or paranormal stuff, and the book freaked me out enough that I couldn't drive on the freeway while listening to it. If this sounds like a two-star review, well, it would be, but this is David Mitchell, people! He's just a fabulous writer, best I've encountered in the last ten years or more. I'm eagerly awaiting the end of his paranormal phase--hoping there will be one.

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a masterful writer, an uneven narration

Revisado: 11-13-14

I sort of worship at the altar of David Mitchell, so of course I loved this book. He is simply a masterful writer. And the narrators were all quite good. But the narration was nevertheless a major problem for me. The character around whom the book is structured is Holly Sykes, who we meet in her own voice in the first and last decades of her life. In the other episodes, someone else's story is told, though Holly Sykes is always a character in their stories. It makes sense to have different narrators for different episodes, since many of the stories are told by other characters. The problem is that Holly absolutely comes alive in the first episode: beautifully narrated and wonderfully written. In all the later episodes, she is incredibly flat. I kept looking for some sign of her individuality and her humanity, but really never saw it. So either David Mitchell has not successfully drawn an engaging portrait of Holly through the various decades of her life (quite possible), or I just couldn't get past the fact that when Holly talked in all the later episodes, she had a different voice and thus was not herself, making it difficult for me to connect her to the girl I met in the first episode. So now, after having invested many many hours in listening to the audiobook, I have to buy the book and read it if I want to decide whether or not David Mitchell really is all that. A lot is at stake here! I've been telling everyone I know that he's the best writer of his generation in the English language, and if he's written a crappy central character, I have to stop saying that! Or else he has to let me edit his next novel before it goes to press. Everybody needs an editor or twelve or twenty.

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how a narrator can ruin a book

Revisado: 05-09-10

The book had its moments, good and bad. But I never could decide if it was the book that was frustrating me, or merely the narrator, who was simply ghastly. Her voice was grating, especially when she tried to read children's voices. Worse still, when she read grown women's voices, they talked like children too, which was beyond annoying. The southern accents blew in and out, not at all consistent. I kept trying to hear through the narrator to get the author's voice, an exhausting and completely unrewarding task when you're just trying to get a small slice of entertainment and/or insight in your day.

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Fantastic!

Revisado: 04-30-10

How good was this? Really, really good! Ebershoff is a wonderful writer who absolutely gets inside the head of a wide range of characters. If you're looking for a romping fast read, this might not be for you, but the interweaving of the two stories--one from the early days of the LDS, one in the present, involving a splinter group of the LDS--is well done and keeps you coming back to see what develops. The historical detail is beautiful, and Ebershoff balances religious tolerance and sound moral judgment admirably well.

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OK, not great

Revisado: 04-30-10

I am a huge lover of all things Greek, and I had read Sue Monk Kidd's _Dance of the Dissident Daughter_ (actually assigned it to a class) and found it very intriguing. And as a 50-something woman with young daughters, it all seemed like the perfect read was about to come my way. But honestly, it as too navel-gazing for my tastes. I don't know what it would be like going around in the world waiting for signs and portents meant just for you, but to me it just seems narcissistic. Oddly, I found the daughter's story far more compelling than the mom's.

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quirky but wonderful

Revisado: 04-30-10

I can imagine that this wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, but it was mine. Really delightful. Slow pace, but involving and thoughtful.

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