Riadh Sebri từ Jainagar, Uttarakhand , India

riadh_sebri

11/22/2024

Dữ liệu người dùng, đánh giá và đề xuất cho sách

Riadh Sebri Sách lại (11)

2019-05-15 23:31

Football Stick-O-Rama Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi:

I had a hard time picking out a star rating for this book. Three felt too generous and two felt too stingy. As much as I liked certain aspects of it, it was let down by what I saw as several serious problems. The premise is attractive: a man named Jonas wakes up to find himself apparently the last living soul on Earth, microorganisms and plants excluded. Glavinic takes a very interesting approach here, following Jonas's path through his hometown of Vienna in his attempts to find other people and/or discover what happened to everyone. Other reviewers here have referenced the obvious comparisons, I Am Legend and The Quiet Earth, and I agree that those are more successful books. The problem is that Glavinic starts out with such a huge premise... and then sort of makes it the backdrop for an exploration of the self fracturing in circumstances of extreme, traumatic isolation. That's how I interpreted it, anyway. But this would have worked better had there not been so many hints that other forces might be at work, that some immense payoff was imminent. The sheer length of the book works against the premise, as well. Around page 200, I got annoyed and started skimming. Around page 300, things finally seemed to be happening again, and I re-entered the story, both relieved and disappointed to realize I hadn't missed much. If the whole book was meant to be about one man coming undone in an inexplicably emptied-out world, Glavinic does the reader no favors by subjecting him or her to nearly 400 pages of it. A final concern is that several obvious factual questions aren't addressed: If all the people are gone, how does the power stay on? If insects, birds, and mammals disappear, how does environmental collapse not follow in fairly short order? Did these things need to be dealt with? Perhaps; perhaps not. In its favor, the writing itself (with the caveat that this is a translation) is excellent. Settings are exquisitely rendered; Vienna itself is almost a secondary character here. Glavinic writes with a clear sense of who his protagonist Jonas is. Tension builds. A creeping sense of dread hangs over the book: you get the sense something awful is going on. (The only problem is that this great build-up then goes around in circles.) There's a lot here that is thought-provoking and worthy and good, but in the end, it doesn't all come together. Writing all this, I've finally realized which book this reminded me of the most: Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. There are thematic similarities: an exploration of the self, cities as symbolic constructs, mysteries hanging just beyond the protagonist's grasp. Murakami did this much, much better (as if anyone who knows me didn't see that comment coming), delivering the payoff but still ending on a note that is at once wrenching, mind-blowing, and yet intimate. Night Work didn't need to be a American-style thriller to work, but it's too long for the psychological insight and intimacy it's trying for, about 25% of it being skimmable. The verdict: Long literary foreplay but no shag at the end; instead of putting out, your partner drags you out of bed to eat popcorn and watch a documentary.

Người đọc Riadh Sebri từ Jainagar, Uttarakhand , India

Người dùng coi những cuốn sách này là thú vị nhất trong năm 2017-2018, ban biên tập của cổng thông tin "Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn" khuyến cáo rằng tất cả các độc giả sẽ làm quen với văn học này.