The Dove in the Belly

5.0

“[...] he liked the feeling he had already claimed.”

The book started in a really weird media res but it didn't give me any good reason to justify why we started there; then it used “capsule chapters” to quickly explain the months prior these first few pages of the book. Only after that is that I got interested on what was happening, but the book's lack of interest on building up a decent start had already killed the vibe hard for me. Things after that went fine, though... until the final chapters. The closer the book got to the end, the less it became about Ben and Ronny, and the more it became about (what I can only call) the author's fear of death - I mean, seriously, what's up with all that? It just didn't make any sense at all. The last few pages felt like the author was borrowing the character's voices to express his own thoughts on mortality. I could see that he wanted the final message to be “enjoy good things while they last” but all the final pages' moping on loss and mortality didn't justify themselves as the conclusion to the couple's main arc at all. Loss and mortality should've drawn them INTO a conclusion, it shouldn't have been THE conclusion. Specially when it's clear as day that the main force behind the book is trust or the lack thereof. And to top it off, the author didn't finish some character's arcs, nor recognised their disappearances. If even Otis got a closing arc, why Hoagie didn't?

Talking now about the good aspects, Jim is a damn good writer when it comes to transform abstract feelings into text. I also have got to give it to him in the matter of characters, all of them have a very strong voice. They feel real even with the briefest exchanges of dialogue. Ben and Ronny are as real as a book character can be and they're the ones who holds this book together for me. They're the reason why I rated this a 5.0, and not a 2.0.