A nice review @Drew PayneEven if the story wasn't that good.

Not every book is going to be loved, even what many call classics or even award-winning novels, so don't feel bad for writing a negative review of a book others enjoyed. 

I have been holding off reviewing a book with similar issues based on your description. It's Less by Andrew Sean Greer and I am really debating it out. Sure the author won the Pulitzer for the book, but it is one of the hardest books to really get into or derive meaning from. It meanders from one subject to another without ever fully realizing its potential (maybe that's the vogue, question everything without giving any concrete substance). It won literary awards, so I am giving it another slow read and a bit of patience before writing a review. 

13 hours ago, W_L said:

A nice review @Drew PayneEven if the story wasn't that good.

Not every book is going to be loved, even what many call classics or even award-winning novels, so don't feel bad for writing a negative review of a book others enjoyed. 

I have been holding off reviewing a book with similar issues based on your description. It's Less by Andrew Sean Greer and I am really debating it out. Sure the author won the Pulitzer for the book, but it is one of the hardest books to really get into or derive meaning from. It meanders from one subject to another without ever fully realizing its potential (maybe that's the vogue, question everything without giving any concrete substance). It won literary awards, so I am giving it another slow read and a bit of patience before writing a review. 

Thanks @W_L.

I want to write honest reviews of the books I've read, and some of them just weren't very good. This was one of those books that so many people, at the time, told me I HAD to read and when I did, I was so disappointed in it. It had such a good premise too.

My only advice is be honest (And don't give away the whole plot, but that's the write in me). You obviously didn't like Less and you can reason why you didn't like it, which is so important. They are our opinions but we need to be able to explain and reason why we came to a conclusion, not just "I didn't like it." You've done that already here.

I've set myself the challenge of writing reviews of all the books I have read (Well the ones I can remember I've read), whether they were good, bad or dull. I probably won't achieve it but so what? I have learnt a lot from it. It's helped me in my own writing, to avoid traps other writers easily fall into and has reminded me the importance of plotting and moving the characters forward. Just because everyone else liked a book, does it mean I have to? When I re-read Larry Kramer's novel Faggots, I was shocked at how bad it was. It lacked all the insights that I had enjoyed in his plays.

10 hours ago, Drew Payne said:

Thanks @W_L.

I want to write honest reviews of the books I've read, and some of them just weren't very good. This was one of those books that so many people, at the time, told me I HAD to read and when I did, I was so disappointed in it. It had such a good premise too.

My only advice is be honest (And don't give away the whole plot, but that's the write in me). You obviously didn't like Less and you can reason why you didn't like it, which is so important. They are our opinions but we need to be able to explain and reason why we came to a conclusion, not just "I didn't like it." You've done that already here.

I've set myself the challenge of writing reviews of all the books I have read (Well the ones I can remember I've read), whether they were good, bad or dull. I probably won't achieve it but so what? I have learnt a lot from it. It's helped me in my own writing, to avoid traps other writers easily fall into and has reminded me the importance of plotting and moving the characters forward. Just because everyone else liked a book, does it mean I have to? When I re-read Larry Kramer's novel Faggots, I was shocked at how bad it was. It lacked all the insights that I had enjoyed in his plays.

Lucky for these guys, we're not actual literary critics, just amateur peer authors with a strong opinion  

I agree with you, not everything has to be loved or liked equally, but be able to reason why you think there are issues with a book or story beyond just personal opinion or taste. I've tried to do that with my gay book and now Anime/Manga reviews, I know some stories are stronger than others, some authors with great stories had a bad story concept, or in the end, there was a major problem with how characters worked.

There's also a cultural element in stories too, For your book, Chronicle of a Death Foretold is told from a Latin American cultural landscape with their own sensibilities that might be alien to say US or Canadian cultural perspective. It may be popular with its target audience due to the elements of the story people identify with.

The same was true when I reviewed the Manga and Anime Series, Super Lovers, which to me felt uncomfortable and was borderline child grooming between the gay couple with a 9-year age gap, meeting when they were respectively 17 and 8, while slowly getting into a relationship at 23 and 14. Yet, Japanese female audiences loved the manga and anime to the point of having a 2nd season and 16 volumes. I have to leave my perspective and try to understand why so many female audiences enjoyed it for an honest review, so I looked at why the plot might interest the target audience. 

On 8/4/2022 at 2:02 AM, W_L said:

Lucky for these guys, we're not actual literary critics, just amateur peer authors with a strong opinion  

I agree with you, not everything has to be loved or liked equally, but be able to reason why you think there are issues with a book or story beyond just personal opinion or taste. I've tried to do that with my gay book and now Anime/Manga reviews, I know some stories are stronger than others, some authors with great stories had a bad story concept, or in the end, there was a major problem with how characters worked.

There's also a cultural element in stories too, For your book, Chronicle of a Death Foretold is told from a Latin American cultural landscape with their own sensibilities that might be alien to say US or Canadian cultural perspective. It may be popular with its target audience due to the elements of the story people identify with.

The same was true when I reviewed the Manga and Anime Series, Super Lovers, which to me felt uncomfortable and was borderline child grooming between the gay couple with a 9-year age gap, meeting when they were respectively 17 and 8, while slowly getting into a relationship at 23 and 14. Yet, Japanese female audiences loved the manga and anime to the point of having a 2nd season and 16 volumes. I have to leave my perspective and try to understand why so many female audiences enjoyed it for an honest review, so I looked at why the plot might interest the target audience. 

I learnt to write book reviews writing them for a professional journal (the review I've just posted was one of them). My editor there told me the important thing was to tell readers whether the book was worth buying, just borrowing from their employer's library or to ignore. It was really good advice, so I always write a review to say is this book worth reading or not. It's only my opinion but it is my opinion.

I don't think it was cultural my dislike of Chronicle of a Death Foretold, it was much more structural. I enjoy prose written from an interment, personal point of view, the narrative seen through a character's eyes (it can be from multiple characters' point of view). I really don't like the distant and cold point of view, I like to get under the characters' skin. I've read enough stories written from the point of view of a distant narrator, the worst being a narrator who was not involved in any action of the story (as here), and always I find them emotionally cold.

I know what you mean about Super Lovers. There were elements of Brave New World that I felt really uncomfortable with, many the sexualisation of children, pre-pubescent children physically encouraged to indulge in sex play. I decided that it was very much of the time it was written in, but it still made me feeling uncomfortable.

I can only encourage you to write your reviews, they are a great way to help people find new things to read. Also, so many online publishing avenues are driven by the reviews a publication receives.

49 minutes ago, Drew Payne said:

I learnt to write book reviews writing them for a professional journal (the review I've just posted was one of them). My editor there told me the important thing was to tell readers whether the book was worth buying, just borrowing from their employer's library or to ignore. It was really good advice, so I always write a review to say is this book worth reading or not. It's only my opinion but it is my opinion.

I don't think it was cultural my dislike of Chronicle of a Death Foretold, it was much more structural. I enjoy prose written from an interment, personal point of view, the narrative seen through a character's eyes (it can be from multiple characters' point of view). I really don't like the distant and cold point of view, I like to get under the characters' skin. I've read enough stories written from the point of view of a distant narrator, the worst being a narrator who was not involved in any action of the story (as here), and always I find them emotionally cold.

I know what you mean about Super Lovers. There were elements of Brave New World that I felt really uncomfortable with, many the sexualisation of children, pre-pubescent children physically encouraged to indulge in sex play. I decided that it was very much of the time it was written in, but it still made me feeling uncomfortable.

I can only encourage you to write your reviews, they are a great way to help people find new things to read. Also, so many online publishing avenues are driven by the reviews a publication receives.

Book reviews are fun for amateurs like me, too. Not every book I read is award-winning or deals with interesting topics, but I enjoy books and stories that explore the human condition. Emotional character development is key to my interest in a story, if you as a reader invest time in a story, you want to be able to know that your time is being used on a story that offers progression with its characters.

Technical third-person narratives and "cold" 1st person narratives are best used for certain genres: Mystery being the one most often pointed. Another would be True Crime genre, Truman Capote's detached style from his famed novel, In Cold Blood, is a great example of where the cold objective narrator can work within prose to tell a story. However, I do agree with you; I can only read such stories occasionally if the inclination for mystery comes, but otherwise, the narrative structure is too objective for my tastes, lacking humanity. It's a personal preference, I am not against the use of the cold narrative style, it's just the plot and story need to fit the style. For instance, you can't usually write romance in such a manner without losing the essence of the genre, but you can write science fiction in this manner if you are objectifying human interactions from a non-human perspective, i.e. AI or alien species.

Another aspect I learned, if you enjoy reading and reviewing books, beta reading for other writers may come second nature. I've done a fair bit of beta reading over the last year, bringing a library's worth of insight from various genres and writers. I am not a technical editor with grammar or sentence construction, but I can offer things about genres and story arcs through my exposure to help enhance stories or offer insights into plot formation. That's the second job of a reviewer, especially at the pre-publication stage whether amateur or professional, to offer insights into what the story says and its characters develop.

On 8/8/2022 at 2:55 PM, W_L said:

Book reviews are fun for amateurs like me, too. Not every book I read is award-winning or deals with interesting topics, but I enjoy books and stories that explore the human condition. Emotional character development is key to my interest in a story, if you as a reader invest time in a story, you want to be able to know that your time is being used on a story that offers progression with its characters.

Technical third-person narratives and "cold" 1st person narratives are best used for certain genres: Mystery being the one most often pointed. Another would be True Crime genre, Truman Capote's detached style from his famed novel, In Cold Blood, is a great example of where the cold objective narrator can work within prose to tell a story. However, I do agree with you; I can only read such stories occasionally if the inclination for mystery comes, but otherwise, the narrative structure is too objective for my tastes, lacking humanity. It's a personal preference, I am not against the use of the cold narrative style, it's just the plot and story need to fit the style. For instance, you can't usually write romance in such a manner without losing the essence of the genre, but you can write science fiction in this manner if you are objectifying human interactions from a non-human perspective, i.e. AI or alien species.

Another aspect I learned, if you enjoy reading and reviewing books, beta reading for other writers may come second nature. I've done a fair bit of beta reading over the last year, bringing a library's worth of insight from various genres and writers. I am not a technical editor with grammar or sentence construction, but I can offer things about genres and story arcs through my exposure to help enhance stories or offer insights into plot formation. That's the second job of a reviewer, especially at the pre-publication stage whether amateur or professional, to offer insights into what the story says and its characters develop.

 

Yes, the detached narrator or distant/God point-of-view can work but it’s a style we are very much moving away from. Modern readers (me included) like to get under the skin of the characters we are reading about. I'm currently (finally) reading The Martian Chronicles. There are fascinating ideas on the book but Bradbury takes a distance view of his characters and often this can be frustrating. These characters are going through the most amazing experiences and Bradbury barely tells me what they are thinking and feeling.

Saying that, recently I read EM Fosters’ The Machine Stops, which was written in a very Edwardian novel style, a distant point-of-view, and yet the story it was telling was so fascinating that I really didn't notice it.

There are a lot of detective novels that use intimate point-of-view to very effectively tell their stories, PJ James and Ruth Rendell do this very effectively. Ruth Rendell often used it to allow the reader to know more of the plot than the characters in it. And of course, Agatha Christie invented the unreliable narrator.

I write very much in the form of the intimate point-of-view, I like getting under my characters skin and working out their motivations and emotions. For me, it has become the most natural and satisfying way to write. Reviewing books has also shown me how effective it is. But it is a writing style and previously the distant narrator/point-of-view was the favoured way to write.