Alexandra Kaste

I wasn't changed by this book. It was well written (if occasionally bordering on pretentious) and I enjoyed reading it. It was hard to put down and while I read it, I felt I was being changed. But when I finished, nothing had really changed. Chbosky felt like he threw some wonderful characters (I'll give it that) into as many crap situations as he could think of and saw if they could bring some morality out of it. Perks was a well-constructed book with lovely characters that was just trying a little too hard.

Wow. How in the world did she tie this whole strange story up so perfectly? So many intricate layers and small inner stories that sort of obfuscated the real story: it's about a small boy trying to save his mother. But while these side stories could have detracted from the main one, somehow it actually added breadth and depth to the story.
The different narrative styles were great, and I just liked how the words looked on the page. It was exactly how the story of these people should have been told. Good job, Dewitt.
This review is jumbled but that's how the book is so get used to it.

Amazing how I could love and hate someone so much. Despite killing almost everyone Frankenstein knew, I still found his monster far more lovable than Frankenstein himself. Frankenstein is what really bothered me about this book. He really annoyed me pretty much the whole time. I thought the only book with this much angst was Twilight. It was understandable but overplayed and especially early on, he did much more fainting and self-loathing than anything else.

I'm very ashamed to say that i didn't love this book as much as the critics, literally every end of the year list, and my mom said I was supposed to. Maybe I'm just perverse. I really did enjoy the writing style and the two main characters but I never felt like I really engaged with it.
When I found out it took the guy ten years to write, I understood my issue: it's too darn cleanly written. Everything is as perfectly placed as the machinery this guy's so fond of eulogizing. And it pisses me off. I wanted some sort of spark, something that added a weird, unexpected dimension and threw a wrench into these flat little characters, who are all so conveniently obsessed with poetic pursuits.
Also, I just kept thinking of this as like the more political version of the invention of Hugo Cabret and honestly I liked that book better.
I also despise too explicit epilogues; I don't need to know how gross, old, and purposeless my spunky lil characters have gotten.
This is an extremely crabby review and I did actually enjoy this book so I'm giving it a four. But that's mainly so I don't bring down its exceptional rating. Heaven forbid.

In writing, characters have wants and needs, and the resolution of the need at the expense of the want is the hallmark of a happy ending. The character grows up, realizes the want was immature and becomes content with resolving the need. However, this story telling device only works if the character's want is actually immature. When it isn't, but still lives in opposition with the need, the story is a tragedy. This story is a tragedy.

Wow, I forgot how much I love Chaim Potok. The last book I read of his, the painfully lugubrious Gift of Asher Lev, kind of colored my memories of his other books, making me forget their beautiful symbolism and character work and emphasizing their poor pacing and multitude of solitary, ponderous walks. But he has risen from the ashes in my mind. This book is rife with with what makes him so memorable; he marries what initially seems to be a niche struggle and ends up making powerful, universal statements with it. So glad that my library's poor selection forced me to read this.

I have so many mean things to say about this book.

It's been a long time since I finished something purely from spite, so here are a collection of things that pissed me off about this book.

-if I could go through and remove every simile from this book, it wouldn't fix it but I'd have fewer wrinkles. “Her words fell from her lips, like so many smoking leaves” STFU
-no one has ever smelled like green tea or cupcakes
-I would also bully Samantha
-the bunnies are so much cooler and better than Samantha and I cannot believe they were supposed to be the villains
-if Samantha experienced real oppression, I think her head would explode
-if you can't write something better than Barton Fink, you, as a writer, shouldn't write about writer's block
-plus one star and then minus it for the prom scene because it was actually great and it raised my hopes just to dash them
-don't write about MFA programs, it's tacky
-i had to rewind the audiobook a few times just to show my boyfriend particularly egregious writing. E.g. “My smile cracked like a mirror cracking” and “She was a great girl-shaped forest. She was a thing on fire. Her hand was leaves and smoke and snow and flesh all at once.”
-i kept thinking it was going to be self aware and then it never was :'(

Anyway, go read “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere” for the disaffected Ivy league experience and anything Angela Carter for the weird fairy tale fiction part. God, I'm so worked up.