Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
DNF at 24%.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a story about Sadie and Sam’s friendship and game development partnership over the years. I had concerns going in that it would be everything I hated about Ready Player One, but thankfully Zevin treads a very different path with regard to gaming nostalgia – if you disliked RPO as much as I did, you might just find this one to hit the spot.
However, the one constant issue I had with the quarter of the book I read was the narration. Instead of allowing scenes to happen and flow organically, we’re given highly summarized snapshots, and even then, the narrator goes off on tangents to describe elements of a character’s past or to insert a future interview snippet. This makes the read feel bogged-down and heavy – which is disappointing as it’s very clear that Zevin is a great writer, and I did want to know what happened with the characters. I just really was not enjoying the read enough to keep going and push through another 75% of it.
Thank you to Knopf Doubleday and NetGalley for providing a copy for review.
A Map for the Missing by Belinda Huijuan Tang
DNF at 30%.
A Map for the Missing follows one man’s journey to find his father. On the way, he learns more about the secrets of his family and his home country.
I was really excited to read this, as I was hopeful that it would be a really riveting read. Unfortunately, I think the fact is it just isn’t for me. I didn’t really feel invested (or even interested) in the characters, and eventually I stopped reading it because I realized I didn’t really care what happened in the end. This isn’t a glaring fault of the author – it’s clear that Tang is a good writer. The prose is quiet, though, and I felt like I couldn’t really get a grasp on the voice or the characters as a result.
Thank you to Penguin Press and NetGalley for providing a copy for review.
The Attic Child by Lola Jaye
DNF at 54%.
The Attic Child tells the story of Dikembe and Lowra, two children from different times, and their childhood spent in the same attic of the same house. More than that, though, it’s a story of trauma, and shines a light on the horrific way children were taken from their homes and put on display as objects rather than human beings.
The narrative flips between Dikembe at the beginning of the 20th century and Lowra in the 1970s and 1990s. Dikembe’s sections are heartbreaking, yet I was fully invested in what happened to him as a character. I’d been vaguely aware of children and adults from “exotic” countries exhibited for events like the World’s Fair at the time, but it had never been framed from the perspective of the people who were taken from their homes. Dikembe’s story sadly wouldn’t have been unusual for the time, and I’m glad that Jaye sought to bring more light to this practice.
I did find Lowra to be harder to empathize with – perhaps this is a result of her trauma, or perhaps this is just part of her character. Either way, any time I was reading a section about Lowra, I was anxious to get back to Dikembe’s sections. Again, I’m not entirely convinced this was a mistake by the author so much as just who Lowra is, but it made me want to fast-foward and get to the next chapter more quickly. Ultimately, this is what made me quit reading – I just wasn’t interested enough in Lowra to get through the sections that heavily featured her.
Overall, I’d recommend this book to those interested in dual timelines or historical fiction.
Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for providing a copy for review.
