Review of Margo Lanagan's "Tender Morsels"

(Written September 30, 2012)

If you have read this book, you know it's not easy to write a 'one-fold' review about. It's just too controversial; it's not a 'love or hate' book. It's not black and white. And although based on "Snow White and Rose Red" of brothers Grimm - it's not a pretty story that ends well. It has true human feelings and problems.

I will start with the things I don't like and move on to things I absolutely loved about this volume.

The premise of the story is really not something I take pleasure in reading about: incest is just too creepy to be enjoyed. The world author had created wasn't explained at all, which wasn't bad, but it felt like you're descending the stairs, you think there is one more step, but there isn't - and you get that sinking feeling at the bottom of your stomach. Not bad, just unsettling.

The fact that the narration in first person changed three narrators was confusing and simply unpleasant. I don't know why modern writers feel like they need to come up with a new style or with convoluted ways of telling the story... Is it because they don't want to be like the writers before them? Do they feel they need to prove that they are special?

Well, Lanagan doesn't need to prove she is special. She is. Her language is simply brilliant. The metaphors she uses are so definite, so clear, so precise, that you realize there is no other way to describe things she's describing. Some of them took my breath away, and being a writer myself, I thought "I want to be able to use eloquent language such as this. I want to think this way".

Listen to some of them and see for yourself how beautiful her language is:

"[The moon] lit up everything without discrimination or favor".

"Some man's pint mug sat with drunken precision on a windowsill".

"[She] came home one evening, spilling autumn cold from her skirts and hair..."

"I had drunk a little and fuzzed and furred the edges of that hard blood-black pain dragging through me like I had swallowed a spiked boulder."

"[The child was crying] full and lustily, convinced she would die milkless".

And "... Rosevine clambering over, choked with pale blooms and buds."

I am positively recommending this book, but please don't think it's not dark, disturbing, confusing, at times annoying or that it's an easy read. Not at all. But it's a good piece of literature, that challenges the reader and makes him think. Hard. Although, if you're a bit of a lazy reader, you probably won't get passed the first few chapters.

How many stars?... I really don't know. Maybe 4 for her language and 1,5 for the story...

Review of Stephenie Meyer's "Breaking Dawn (Twilight #4)"

(Written June 24, 2012)

I couldn't understand why I'm reading this book. After all, I disliked most of it. 

As I said about the previous volumes of this saga, the series doesn't offer any philosophy, doesn't change anything in the world, doesn't teach or offer solutions to anything whatsoever. It's about a couple of people and their "struggle" with each other. They don't make a difference in the world, the world is not touched by any of their problems. It's all about them and them only.

Yet, I see people getting truly hooked on it. Why?

I still don't have a definite answer, but the 4th installment of the book explained a few things.

(Some spoilers ahead)

I think it might be the fact that every person/reader wants to have their life pan out like a fairy tale - "And they lived happily ever after..."

Who wouldn't want to find their true love, have a mutual can't-live-without-you relationship, marry them, become indestructible, beautiful, fast, strong, immortal, have eternity to be with your love, have an adorable baby no one can resist loving, have a new loving family, while the old one is oh-so understanding about everything?...

Who wouldn't want to have a life where not one of the people you care about  dies, even though the whole story is based on "oh, my God, someone is coming to kill me/you/us"?

Where people have the exact power that would explain things and help you?... (Where you have the power to save everyone?)

Where your best friend who'd have died if he wasn't with you - finds a new love and gets over you?...

Where absolutely everything works out SO conveniently?

The author is very clumsy and quite unconvincing about the whole love-triangle. I repeat myself, but the heroes of the story appear to be dumb, stubborn, and plain imbecilic. Especially, this is unforgivable for Edward, who is over 100 years old. No way a person that old would act like a 13 year old boy with hormonal imbalance.

But I want to point out the change of the narrative in book 4 from Bella to Jake: I thought that was a clever move.

Unfortunately, that's all I have to offer.

1 star for the story; 2,5 stars for making me want to read it. 

Review of Stephenie Meyer's "New Moon (Twilight #2)"

(Written May 9, 2012)

I've got some good news, I've got some bad news and I've got some good news.

The good news is: this book is better written compared with the previous one, it's in a more elaborate "language", and offers some good phrasing and metaphors.

The bad news is: the actual story line. It's not really about anything but a bad break-up, while the reason for the break-up is really unconvincing and makes the couple look immensely stupid. That's pretty much the storyline.

The book doesn't have a philosophy, it doesn't stir your mind, doesn't add or change anything. It only describes pain over and over and over and over... The book is extremely melodramatic!!! I can't stress enough how melodramatic it is, but...

The good news is: there is a reader that loves melodramatic, sweet, pappy and mushy stories. I respect the writer for providing a story for that reader. I admire her for writing a book that truly keeps you reading, despite its numerous shortcomings, despite the lack of anything substantial in its pages, despite it being infuriatingly repetitious, despite the fact that her heroes appear spineless, stupid and childish. Despite all that, here I am - reading it.

And for that she gets 2 stars.