For me, this is one of those rare cases where the movie was better than the book. And since I think of the movie as two hours of my life that I will never be able to get back, I dont have much to say about the book that is positive. I read this because my book club assigned it. Otherwise, I would have gladly passed it up.
This is one of those books (or movies, for that matter) that leaves you with very little, if anything, to celebrate. The plot is an exercise in depravity on all levels. There is a palpable chord of poverty and desperation and despair that rings a sour note on every page, and the characters leave you with very little in the end to reward you for the time you spent among the wreckage of their unfortunate lives.
I found Ree to be a very well done and complex character, a glimmer of light among so much darkness. But all of the other characters seemed far less developed, appearing as slightly different versions of the same sad, uneducated, and excessively hostile person. This was a book with no compelling mystery and no significant ending. It was a frigid trudge through ignorance and isolation, and I cannot say that I particularly enjoyed it.
Some will praise this book for its prose, others for its harsh look at the reality of lives lived on the brink of self-destruction. I was not particularly impressed with either, and for those two reasons alone this is not a book that I would recommend.
This is one of those books (or movies, for that matter) that leaves you with very little, if anything, to celebrate. The plot is an exercise in depravity on all levels. There is a palpable chord of poverty and desperation and despair that rings a sour note on every page, and the characters leave you with very little in the end to reward you for the time you spent among the wreckage of their unfortunate lives.
I found Ree to be a very well done and complex character, a glimmer of light among so much darkness. But all of the other characters seemed far less developed, appearing as slightly different versions of the same sad, uneducated, and excessively hostile person. This was a book with no compelling mystery and no significant ending. It was a frigid trudge through ignorance and isolation, and I cannot say that I particularly enjoyed it.
Some will praise this book for its prose, others for its harsh look at the reality of lives lived on the brink of self-destruction. I was not particularly impressed with either, and for those two reasons alone this is not a book that I would recommend.
