My Rating: 3 stars
This was another one of those books where I expected it
to be one thing but it turned out to be something quite different. While I can’t say I disliked the book (I did
give it 3 stars after all), I didn’t “like” it either and in fact, found much
of the book a chore to get through, mostly because of the frustration I felt with
the main characters and their actions. I
think it’s safe to say that this is one of those “it’s not the book, it’s me”
type of situations where I realize after reading it that this book clearly wasn’t
for me.
When I first read the summary for this book, I was really
interested in reading it, as the premise sounded fascinating and unique. The narrative revolves around the 4 Gold siblings
who find out from a fortune teller the dates of their deaths. This early prophesy impacts each of the
siblings in different ways and over the course of the book, as each sibling’s
story unfolds, we are taken down 4 different paths, yet each one links back to
the other and ultimately back to their family.
Both the summary and the opening chapter hinted at fantasy / magical
realism elements and at first, I felt that the author Chloe Benjamin did a
really good job establishing the aura of mysticism with the children’s visit to
“the woman on Hester Street.” But then,
as soon as the first sibling’s story starts – the narrative begins with Simon’s
story, then moves on to Klara, Daniel, and finally Varya -- the “mysticism”
that was present in the introductory chapter quickly fades and doesn’t return
for the rest of the novel. I feel like
this was one of the biggest problems with this book – it started off strong and
was able to establish an atmospheric mood that made me want to continue turning
the pages to see what each sibling’s fate ends up being and whether the prophesies
would be fulfilled, however that mood fizzled as soon as the author started
going more in-depth into each of the sibling’s lives. Some of the stories had a bit too much detail
– some random scenes and references to things that I felt weren’t necessary in
furthering the plot and so I ended up skimming some parts (especially with
Simon’s story, which I’ll get back to later), pushing forward to the last few
chapters of each character’s section so I could find out what ultimately
happens to each one.
In terms of the writing, I would say that it was pretty
good – not stellar but not bad either. I think the biggest issue with the
writing was the lack of consistency -- there were some parts that were very
well-written and actually provoked quite a bit of thought and self-reflection,
but then there were other parts that left me scratching my head, wondering where
the author was trying to go with the plot.
This brings me to the other major problem I had with the book: I feel like the author tried to cover too
much ground and ended up being all over the place. There were many topics touched on in the book
– family, relationships, love, religion, politics, education, health, environment,
race, gender, discrimination, military, science, history, ethics…the list goes
on and on – however I feel like there wasn’t much in-depth exploration of these
issues and instead, many of them were thrown in randomly rather than
incorporated seamlessly into the stories.
With all that said though, one of the things I did appreciate about the
book was the amount of research the author put in to make sure her references
to events and settings were as accurate as possible – this part was consistent
throughout all 4 narratives and was one of the redeeming qualities of the book
for me.
One thing I do want to mention, which I feel is important
for those deciding whether to read this book or not, is that there were quite a
few explicit sex scenes, mostly in Simon’s story, that were uncomfortable to
read. I’m not sure if I’m explaining
this correctly but the problem for me wasn’t necessarily the graphic nature of
the sex scenes per se, but rather that I wasn’t expecting those types of scenes
in this book and also I didn’t feel they were necessary to include – the story
could have been told perfectly well without those scenes. Same goes with many of the other random
sexual references interspersed throughout the book – while those weren’t
necessarily explicit, it just didn’t make sense to me why they needed to be
included.
As I said at the beginning of my review, this book clearly
didn’t work for me, however I seem to be an outlier here since there are many 4
and 5 star reviews for this book, so I would say check those out before
deciding.
Received ARC from
G.P. Putnam’s Sons (Penguin Group) via Edelweiss.
