Alexandra Kaste
This is a hard review for me because I can't honestly say that i liked it. There is no doubt that is masterfully written and a landmark in American drama. My issue is not with quality just with the content. The whole play feels very intrusive, like peeping through curtains. i couldn't shake the feeling that I just should not be witnessing something so intensely personal to the people in the play. In the beginning, Honey and Nick felt very much a part of the audience witnessing the cruel, twisted battles of George and Martha. The way George and Martha's games turned them from spectators to active participant was extremely disconcerting as an audience member, feeling that the same could easily happen to me.
Why the hell this book has 4.23 stars while Alice Munro's Dear Life only has 3.7 I refuse to understand. I finished this and honestly don't remember a single story or image. Reading it wasn't bad, but became a monotony of “how will this couple break up?” Go read Alice Munro. I care when her couples break up.
3.5 stars really. I liked this book, which is not really the experience I expected from as divisive a figure as James Joyce. This was my first foray into his œuvre, and I liked it? But didn't love it? It's definitely a solid, fantastically observed collection, and occasionally a story did leave me staring into the distance after finishing it, particularly The Dead and A Painful Case, but it just didn't hit the same as some of his contemporaries have. One day, I'll gird my loins and actually read Ulysses, but until then I'll guard my opinion of Joyce as a very solid writer who wrote horrifying smut to his wife.
Okay, put this one down under the “don't let teen girls read this”–no unfounded aspersion on girls, just personal experience. First read: wow, how romantic and beautiful, in the midst of life we are in death, am I right, the suburbs sure are evocative. Interim: wow, death and teenage girls get romanticized a lot, that's really concerning, this book celebrates that, not cool, the male gaze sure is dangerous. Second read: OH THAT'S THE POINT, DUH, also the suburbs are still really evocative.