The first part of this book is just punishing, but it turns out, worth it. I picked this up for two reasons: one, I heard a few people at the office talking about it & two, Guillermo del Toro is going to direct the film version of it at some point in the future (unless it ends up doomed to development hell). It begins with a total jerk living his slacker mess of a life. He works at a crappy job because he’s been demoted to it, he lives on welfare because he can’t stop having kids, & his relationship with his family consists of telling them to shut up & arguing about television. “Are you sure this book wasn’t meant to be titled Whiner?” & really at the start, & for maybe too long, he does just go around feeling sorry for himself. Interspaced are scenes of violence—people turn on the people around them, seemingly for no reason. Some of these vignettes are good, & work. Others fall into a sort of cheap sex-shock trope—oh my gosh, they cut off his nuts! The girl at the bar who wants to have sex with you might want to kill you! A little moral panic for my tastes, but since the book is largely about panic, I can be forgiving. All the garbage in the protagonists life ends up as a ploy to make him more palatable in the end, & I think it worked. The end of the book is some what rushed, but if you take into account that this is book one of a trilogy, it isn’t a problem.
She hate me.
The first part of this book is just punishing, but it turns out, worth it. I picked this up for two reasons: one, I heard a few people at the office talking about it & two, Guillermo del Toro is going to direct the film version of it at some point in the future (unless it ends up doomed to development hell). It begins with a total jerk living his slacker mess of a life. He works at a crappy job because he’s been demoted to it, he lives on welfare because he can’t stop having kids, & his relationship with his family consists of telling them to shut up & arguing about television. “Are you sure this book wasn’t meant to be titled Whiner?” & really at the start, & for maybe too long, he does just go around feeling sorry for himself. Interspaced are scenes of violence—people turn on the people around them, seemingly for no reason. Some of these vignettes are good, & work. Others fall into a sort of cheap sex-shock trope—oh my gosh, they cut off his nuts! The girl at the bar who wants to have sex with you might want to kill you! A little moral panic for my tastes, but since the book is largely about panic, I can be forgiving. All the garbage in the protagonists life ends up as a ploy to make him more palatable in the end, & I think it worked. The end of the book is some what rushed, but if you take into account that this is book one of a trilogy, it isn’t a problem.
- Post a new comment
- 8 comments
- Post a new comment
- 8 comments
