Post by Deleted on May 30, 2020 20:52:50 GMT
Where to begin. In terms of the writing it was an enjoyable read but my, the hype was not justified. At the very minimum I expect a book to be an enjoyable read. That's a given.
Truth be told this was nothing more than a Mills and Boon romance novel for the contemporary age. Every time a book like this wins awards and gets heaped in praise, I come to the conclusion that modern books are predominantly written for the growing demographic of people who... don't like reading books.
Firstly, there's nothing remotely 'normal' about these two characters. I'll skip over the predictably dream-like otherness of Marianne and focus on the utterly non-existent Connell. I'm sorry ladies, but that guy (calm, thoughtful, caring, emotionally mature, intellectually honest, culturally sensitive etc) only exists in the heads of women - women writers in particular. He isn't just these things by the end of the book. No, he's these things from the very start, as a teenage boy. You know, like most teenage boys are. The classic teenage boy who's sensitive and mature and doesn't like to sexualise women because he respects them too much (but fucks them incessantly). Sigh.
These two people are highly popular, good looking, the smartest in school, having regular sex, and are apparently off to university where they'll be going travelling around Europe and becoming writers. Normal people, you say? Fuck off.
I was genuinely quite irritated but this book. It's everything I hate in fiction. I was half-expecting a final chapter to reveal that Marianne was sexually assaulted as a child (perhaps by her father, maybe even by her cartoonishly evil, moustache twirling brother). But thankfully, that didn't happen. I was also slightly offended by the implication that women (or men, for that matter) who enjoy rough sex have some kind of underlying mental health problem. I did, however, like the ending. These two millennial idiots can't seem to communicate their feelings. Even at the end she tells him to go to New York. I do wonder what point Rooney was trying to make though. It's not as if her generation are emotionally closed off. If anything they're more prone to expressing their feelings than any other previous generation so it doesn't make any sense. Maybe she was criticising exactly that - modern young people sleep with everyone without consequences but... gulp... maybe there are consequences. Yawn.
I honestly couldn't tell if the book's title was ironic or if it was a clever twist on those awful romance novels. In other words what if, instead of a randy buccaneer and a curvy buxom wench, it was a saucy romance between two... normal people. Geddit?
This is an airport book. Stop celebrating this kind of crap. Go read the Leopard. Yes, it's an easy read but a book needs to be more than that. The thing about teenage love stories is that... they're only really interesting to the people involved in them.
Had this book come without all the hype, I might have found it vaguely charming (in a similar vein to 'Elmet') but it just isn't a work of major significance. I'm tempted to watch the BBC show. But that'll probably be even worse.
Truth be told this was nothing more than a Mills and Boon romance novel for the contemporary age. Every time a book like this wins awards and gets heaped in praise, I come to the conclusion that modern books are predominantly written for the growing demographic of people who... don't like reading books.
Firstly, there's nothing remotely 'normal' about these two characters. I'll skip over the predictably dream-like otherness of Marianne and focus on the utterly non-existent Connell. I'm sorry ladies, but that guy (calm, thoughtful, caring, emotionally mature, intellectually honest, culturally sensitive etc) only exists in the heads of women - women writers in particular. He isn't just these things by the end of the book. No, he's these things from the very start, as a teenage boy. You know, like most teenage boys are. The classic teenage boy who's sensitive and mature and doesn't like to sexualise women because he respects them too much (but fucks them incessantly). Sigh.
These two people are highly popular, good looking, the smartest in school, having regular sex, and are apparently off to university where they'll be going travelling around Europe and becoming writers. Normal people, you say? Fuck off.
I was genuinely quite irritated but this book. It's everything I hate in fiction. I was half-expecting a final chapter to reveal that Marianne was sexually assaulted as a child (perhaps by her father, maybe even by her cartoonishly evil, moustache twirling brother). But thankfully, that didn't happen. I was also slightly offended by the implication that women (or men, for that matter) who enjoy rough sex have some kind of underlying mental health problem. I did, however, like the ending. These two millennial idiots can't seem to communicate their feelings. Even at the end she tells him to go to New York. I do wonder what point Rooney was trying to make though. It's not as if her generation are emotionally closed off. If anything they're more prone to expressing their feelings than any other previous generation so it doesn't make any sense. Maybe she was criticising exactly that - modern young people sleep with everyone without consequences but... gulp... maybe there are consequences. Yawn.
I honestly couldn't tell if the book's title was ironic or if it was a clever twist on those awful romance novels. In other words what if, instead of a randy buccaneer and a curvy buxom wench, it was a saucy romance between two... normal people. Geddit?
This is an airport book. Stop celebrating this kind of crap. Go read the Leopard. Yes, it's an easy read but a book needs to be more than that. The thing about teenage love stories is that... they're only really interesting to the people involved in them.
Had this book come without all the hype, I might have found it vaguely charming (in a similar vein to 'Elmet') but it just isn't a work of major significance. I'm tempted to watch the BBC show. But that'll probably be even worse.
