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I Hate This Book 1/10
I'm in need of some ranting. That's reason enough to make you suffer and introduce you to ten books I really, really don't like.
Here's the first book. I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't share my opinion. This one won four prizes, among them the Booker Prize in 1997. You're welcome to rant right back at me.
Warning: Please don't click the cut if you expect a thoughtful critique.
Arundhati Roy: The God of Small Things.
I don't understand how this is supposed to be a master piece. I struggle to even start naming the things I didn't like. It was the language, the plot, the structure, the narration and the characters. Which leaves... nothing.
There's waxing, and then there is waxing, and then there is more waxing (and also, this was a fair representation of the sentence structure that is used). The author is so in love with her silly metaphors, purple prose and endless repetitions that the pages should be sticky from her salivating all over them.
This story is so edgy that it's round. This is the stuff literary critics wank over. It's also the kind of book that makes me go 'Bwuuuu?' Most likely this is because I don't understand. I don't get the message. (Imagine me making air-quotes).
Random Capitalisation Throughout The Book Was Driving Me Up The wall. (Are you wondering why I didn't capitalise wall? Good! You should.)
Plot: Everyone is a douche-nozzle. Love can conquer everything, except it really can't. Betrayal is everywhere. And I mean everywhere.
Try reading this out loud:
"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget."
Remarkable is also the profound wisdom of paragraphs like these:
"When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less."
And there were passages that simply made me burst out laughing:
"Being with him made her feel as though her soul had escaped from the narrow confines of her island country into the vast, extravagant spaces of his. He made her feel as though the world belonged to them- as though it lay before them like an opened frog on a dissecting table, begging to be examined."
Of course, there's also the huh-factor:
"Heaven opened and the water hammered down, reviving the reluctant old well, greenmossing the pigless pigsty, carpet bombing still, tea-colored puddles the way memory bombs still, tea-colored minds."
Here's the first book. I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't share my opinion. This one won four prizes, among them the Booker Prize in 1997. You're welcome to rant right back at me.
Warning: Please don't click the cut if you expect a thoughtful critique.
Arundhati Roy: The God of Small Things.
I don't understand how this is supposed to be a master piece. I struggle to even start naming the things I didn't like. It was the language, the plot, the structure, the narration and the characters. Which leaves... nothing.
There's waxing, and then there is waxing, and then there is more waxing (and also, this was a fair representation of the sentence structure that is used). The author is so in love with her silly metaphors, purple prose and endless repetitions that the pages should be sticky from her salivating all over them.
This story is so edgy that it's round. This is the stuff literary critics wank over. It's also the kind of book that makes me go 'Bwuuuu?' Most likely this is because I don't understand. I don't get the message. (Imagine me making air-quotes).
Random Capitalisation Throughout The Book Was Driving Me Up The wall. (Are you wondering why I didn't capitalise wall? Good! You should.)
Plot: Everyone is a douche-nozzle. Love can conquer everything, except it really can't. Betrayal is everywhere. And I mean everywhere.
Try reading this out loud:
"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget."
Remarkable is also the profound wisdom of paragraphs like these:
"When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less."
And there were passages that simply made me burst out laughing:
"Being with him made her feel as though her soul had escaped from the narrow confines of her island country into the vast, extravagant spaces of his. He made her feel as though the world belonged to them- as though it lay before them like an opened frog on a dissecting table, begging to be examined."
Of course, there's also the huh-factor:
"Heaven opened and the water hammered down, reviving the reluctant old well, greenmossing the pigless pigsty, carpet bombing still, tea-colored puddles the way memory bombs still, tea-colored minds."
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Now that you mention it, there are parallels. It's been a while, but I remember that 'Adler and Engel' was full of similes. It does have a plot, though, and I quite liked it.
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shitebook wins the Georg-Büchner-Preis, but in the last years I did not manage to get into a single one of them. An overboarding usage of needless and senseless similes are part of it, definitely.no subject
I have a soft spot for the dark side, though, and 'Adler und Engel' is pretty dark. It wasn't too pretentious either, but it's been a few years - my opinion might have changed. I notice that I have far less patience with books than I had then.
Are you sure you don't like similes. Let me try to convince you with this beauty (I'm sorry, but I cannot stop quoting Ms Roy):
It was a grand old house, the Ayemenem House, but aloof-looking. As though it had little to do with the people who lived in it. Like an old man with rheumy eyes watching children play, seeing only transience in their shrill elation and their wholehearted commitment to life.
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I read Hollinghurst and still am thoroughly intrigued by his books. And he won the Booker Award, too. ;)
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