Laut Bercerita

Solid 4 stars. I enjoyed it!

Definitely beautiful and had moments that pulled hard on my heartstrings. It's crazy that all this happened so recently. I'm just imagining what my parents were doing at the time, preparing to get married, preparing to start a family, meanwhile in the background the regime was kidnapping, torturing, and murdering student activists. With this image in my head, reading this was like a tale of two separate Indonesias interposed atop one another. Masterfully told and devastating.

However, the prose was just too flowery for me. While I love poetic writing (One of my faves is Ray Bradbury) I feel like all 'serious' Indonesian literature has this same style whether appropriate for the topic and tone of the story or not.

I also hate how the women were described, specifically Anjani with her pale skin, tiny hands, tiny feet, tiny face, tiny teeth. She's so small and petite and beautiful but she can eat like crazy and still be tiny and feminine and adorable. Risih aja si wkwkwkwk.

Additionally, I feel like the epilogue was too long and watered down the ending. It should have been just the letter from Laut or the sea burial with Asmara.

But a solid 4 stars!