The 13.5 Lives Of Captain Bluebear

Judging by the reviews, this book obviously means a great deal to a great many people. Unfortunately, I am not one of them. While I can tolerate whimsy, I do still need something to hang that whimsy on; some through-thread that provides some guiding purpose to the story. In this case I found none.

Yes, this is a memoir (albeit a fictional one), so, yes, it can be excused for being episodic, however this is more like a stream of consciousness than a story. A good memoir usually has some hook or goal around which the narrative flows, but in this case it is a literally a case of “fantastic event A happened, followed fantastic event B, followed by fantastic event C...etc.”. At times this felt more like a bad night after a surfeit of cheese.

From what I have read, the story may improve in the latter stages, however my patience was worn thin long before that, so this has been added to my DNF pile. I can imagine that a younger version of myself might have got more from this - maybe even loved it - but current me is no longer that person.

My gut instinct is that this was originally intended as a graphic novel, where imagery would make up for the slimness of the story, but for some reason that was abandoned and all that survived were the quirky illustrations that dot the book.

I've given this 3 stars, since I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with the book, and I would recommend anyone who feels they have a high tolerance for whimsy to give it a try, but I am somewhat at a loss to understand the amount of high praise it seems to receive.