Рецензия на книгу

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  Draugur_ulv19 декабря 2016 г.

  ** spoiler alert **

  
  

  This book is a very interesting example of what we call in Russian "the mice were hurting and crying but continued eating the cactus". And in that sense it's remarkable.

  I would describe this book as a shopping list that you keep on reading. (Because most of the book is literally just a list of things and food they find).

  On the one hand, I like how minimalistic everything is. Not many conversations or anything, just to keep it rough and unpolished, so you feel the ashes and only the ashes as you read and breathe in. I think it fits the atmosphere very well.

  On the other hand, I have many issues with it, both the language and the plot.

  First question, what's up with ignoring the apostrophes but only in certain words and not others? I get the entire oral story-telling continuation thing and stuff, like quotation marks (very Saramago). But it's only the negations like "couldn't, didn't" etc. that fell out of favour for some reason. Other words kept their apostrophes, so why do it at all?

  Second, he seems to weirdly obsess with some words. Like you won't hear him say "a jacket" or "waves" or anything for the life of him, it's specifically and only "parka" and "surf"...

  Third, if you have that little dialogue, it's easy to get sloppy with it. It A)absolutely contradicts the general feeling that the boy and the man are supposed to be close to each other. B) makes boy seem much younger and dumber than he supposedly is. SOOOO many repetitions. He uses the conversations to show motivations but OMG does it get repetitive and unnecessary, and so much obvious stating that you wanna drop the book.
  Pappa, are they dead
  Yes, they are
  It's cuz they died
  Yes, it is
  ----> not an actual dialogue but it might as well have been.

  Fourth, I think they only show us a few months but it mentions that the apocalyptic events came about three years ago. Let's say they didn't get on the road right away, but still... The events are set in the US area. I checked the distance from the most North point (not Alaska though, just bordering Canada) all the way basically to Mexico (which is where they supposedly found themselves), on foot... it does not take years, in fact, walking for 5 hours a day it takes 95 days. Which is kinda the set up of the book, but why didn't they start walking earlier? Because if they did, they would've already arrived. Even not walking directly, even cleaning the way from time to time, damn did they walk slowly...

  Fifth, being so cautious and all, avoiding "the bad guys", they meet several people in one day and then decide to shoot a signal gun for fun. Like, WHAT?

  And, finally, the happy end. I think with the general mood of the book, and the kid himself, it would've been more believable, imo, if he just shoot himself or kept on walking till he died, or something like that. Like the man lying to him. Taking all the boy's stuff and leaving him there. And if those nice people were behind them all along, and felt for the boy and the man, why didn't they reach them earlier? Ehw, happy ending not fitting shit. Like all the clumsy mentions of God.

  And yet, somehow, I kept on reading (re-reading, actually. I already read it once, a long time ago), hence the kinda positive rating.

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