I read this after A Week in December (my somewhat-less-than-positive final review of which can be found here), back in about January - i.e. about eight lifetimes ago. Thank heaven I make notes when I finish a book!

After battling through the last chapters of Sebastian Faulks, the first page of this was like breathing a massive sigh of relief. Here, much needed, was poetry. Language that not only engaged your attention and drew you into the narrative, but was also important for its own sake; beautiful as well as functional.

I raced through the first half and then made the fatal mistake of coming home and speaking to one of my parents’ best friends. Helen is the closest thing I (in my utterly atheist family) have to a godmother, and she has, ever since I was very young, fed my love of books. The problem is that, like my mother, she has always read everything before I do. Which means she already has opinions about them.

Which, in short, means that when I arrived home to surprise my parents and arrived just in time for a dinner party, and my answer to the inevitable question “what are you reading at the moment?” was this book, I should have really known what was coming next. Helen said she found it “quite good” but that “it wasn’t really cohesive” and that Obreht “went off on tangents all the time so that the point was lost”… AND OH GOD FOR THE LIFE OF ME I COULD NOT GET THIS ANALYSIS OUT OF MY HEAD FOR THE REST OF THE BOOK.

Despite that, however, I loved this book. The style was vivid and lovely, and the characterisation sharp. The plot, whilst acting mostly as a vehicle for the writing, was engaging despite its tangents, and I really enjoyed reading a novel set in Eastern Europe - not a setting that’s particularly common, as far as I know.

Final Word: Don’t visit your parents, and if you do, don’t talk about books. Also, read The Tiger’s Wife.

I’m currently in limbo/transit thanks to being incredibly disorganised regarding my intersemester break, and only have my iPad with me, having left my laptop in St Andrews, so please accept this embarrassingly obvious heavily-doctored photograph of what I’m currently reading, as an apology for my absence and lack of ability to post anything fun.

I have had these two open in my tabs for days now. AMAZON YOU ARE KILLING ME WITH YOUR EXCELLENT OFFERS. DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT I HAVE NO MONEY AND THEREFORE CANNOT TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THEM?