Kiwi

This is a book that will stay with you for a very long time, for better or for worse. It seems you either love or hate this book, and I came out loving it (even though I ugly cried through over 20% of it—and it's a long book).

As someone who usually reads fantasy and not much set in the real world, I could not put this book down once I got past the introductory section. It was very easy for me to get attached to Jude, who the entire book revolves around (I didn't even realize when starting that this is mainly his story). I was rooting for him the entire way through, desperately wanting to know more about him at each turn as it would offer me something new as a treat.

The characters all felt like they lived real and true lives, and written to perfectly match how you're meant to feel about them in that moment. Even certain characters who I loved the whole way through made errors that I hated reading about, thought to myself that I wouldn't forgive someone doing that to me—and that's life. The relationships everyone has with each other, not just with Jude, are the strongest part of the book.

I'm not used to reading such long prose, but it was very enjoyable. I did have several moments where I would start reading one sentence and get lost among the different branching off thoughts and ideas the single sentence goes through, and I'd have to return to the beginning of the sentence to remember what it was meant to be about. This would also happen with chapters, which would sometimes go into a completely different topic than where we first started before finally circling back around. There was also a lot of academic and legal talk that made me wish I were going back to university, and I didn't have a good mind map of the locations and geography talked about, which makes me curious if someone who knows New York well would be able to picture it clearly.

I think about this story at least once a day.

There is something so gentle and peaceful about this story, the way it takes you along the life of three people who've become family. It's slow and meandering, but not in a dull sense. It feels like it's teaching you how to romanticize life, and all the little things that people forget to stop and appreciate. Most of the math went over my head, but since I can only imagine the housekeeper and Root felt much the same, it doesn't seem to really matter. I was certainly hoping and wishing for a happier ending, but the way it went felt true.

Genuinely better than I hoped it could be after the initial hype. The last quarter of the book had me reeling.

This book was a drag to get through, and finally coming out the other end I'm not even certain what kind of story it was attempting to tell. There was never a point where it officially hooked me into not wanting to put it down, it just got somewhat more intriguing after 50%—which, for a book as long as this one, took forever to get to. There were several words that I had never heard of before used frequently throughout the book, so much so that I was glad to be reading an e-book copy so I could look them up. It really added to the bogged down reading experience when I had to be pausing every few paragraphs to try and understand what I was reading. I will admit that this was chosen for the prompt "Out of your comfort zone," but historical is not necessarily a genre I hate, just one I don't dive into that often.

I thought it was going to be a romance and I assumed it would follow the same person from the beginning of the book, but about a third of the way in it starts introducing new POVs and doesn't stop introducing new ones until about halfway. It introduces characters, drops them entirely, brings in new ones, drags back some old ones, and it all became very chaotic to read. I understand why it was written that way now that I'm through with the book and looking back on it, but I only had questions upon questions while I was reading, and I feel like there could've been much more concise ways to write the story.

As I'm not sure where to put these specific gripes, I'll mention them here: the romance—or rather, the original romance—is between a 30 year old man and an 18 year old girl who decide they're in love at first sight under the strangest circumstances. I also noticed that practically every single woman who is not written to be a main or large side character is described sexually in some way, or pointed out to the reader as being a sexual creature, for more than a couple lines.

At the end of it all, I still don't understand the story. This is set in New York, with everything as it should be in real life, but there are touches of magic that seem more odd and out of place than mystical and wondrous. So many people whom are the best of the best, clouds that form a wall and eat anyone who go in, unclear messages about the dead and dying, a horse that can leap a block or two or even fly, a girl who's in a perpetual fever and soon to die who has more knowledge and wisdom than anyone in the world (implied to be because of the fevers). There are 300/900+ pages without the character you're first introduced to, which feels like an insanely long amount when he's who you first assume you're learning the story of. The "magic" is never explained, the characters only decide to accept it at one point or another. In fact, most things in the plot are never explained either, only giving a modicum of a wrap up at the very end.

There were a few parts that entertained me, but they're small, so they get to go at the end. There is a lengthy scene described where a burglar is trying to burgle a home belonging to a burglar-obsessed man, and each description of the burglar trying to get in and finding himself thwarted in this way or that is incredibly funny. A train is stuck in a blizzard, and the moment of being rescued was so heartwarming that I so desperately wanted to like the rest of the book. A man and a woman are separate tenants who share an apartment wall, and they speak to each other and fall in love long before they meet, which was also incredibly cute. But all of these scenes were just that—scenes that didn't last very long, and didn't make up for the rest of it.

I'm sure this is a book for someone out there, maybe someone who wants a world to get entirely lost in for a very long time and who doesn't have a problem suspending their disbelief, but it wasn't for me.

An uncanny look into the way communism forms and falls.

This is the second time I read Animal Farm, the first time being for English class in high school, as so many students do. I can confidently say that I took it in and understood it much more this time than before. Practically all I remembered from before was hating the book, probably because it didn't have a happy ending like all my favourite stories had. As I read it over again this time, I can pinpoint that the scene with Boxer cemented my dislike for the story when I was younger.

It still isn't a book I necessarily enjoyed reading, but I can appreciate it more, and it wasn't a drag to get through. Half the fun is watching all the characters do things simply because they're animals. It does its job well as a commentary on how those who crave power will find their way to the top, or those at the top will let power go to their heads. It certainly leaves you with a hopeless feeling for society, though.

I would recommend this as a read for anyone curious about this kind of social commentary, but with a warning that the ending resolves nothing. As is intended.