Review: The Removed (by Brandon Hobson)

My Rating: 3.5 stars

Brandon Hobson's The Removed is another book I picked up for book club and while I did enjoy it overall, there were some inconsistencies and issues with the story that made this a bit of a tedious read.

First off, I have to say that the writing here was excellent — in fact, the engaging and lyrical flow of the writing was one of the things I liked most about this book, especially the chapters narrated by Maria, which were by far the strongest parts of the story.  Those were the chapters that actually moved me the most on an emotional level and made me wish that the entire story revolved around Maria, Ernest, and Wyatt only without the other characters' story arcs (more on this later).  

While the writing was good, I did have some problems with the execution of the story, which I thought was a bit uneven.  Hobson introduces several heavy topics in this book — grief over the loss of a loved one, the dangers of racial profiling and stereotyping, terminal illness, substance abuse, plight of the indigenous and people of cope, etc — however I felt like the only topic that was thoroughly explored was grief…it almost seemed like perhaps Hobson tried to cover too much all in one shot and some of the other topics ended up falling by the wayside.

And that brings me to the most frustrating parts of this book — the story arcs involving Sonja and Edgar.  I felt like Sonja's entire story was unnecessary and added no value to the story (aside from the "reveal" near the end, though that still didn't justify the necessity of the rest of her story in my opinion).  I also had issues with the way Sonja's character was written, as most of her behavior throughout the story didn't really make sense, even when viewed through the lens of trying to cope with the grief of losing her brother. 

In terms of Edgar's story arc — well, let's just say that I didn't understand majority of it.  It seemed like Edgar's story was written incorporating magical realism, which is something I don't read much of so perhaps that's why it didn't work for me. I mean, plot-wise, I know what happened in Edgar's chapters, but I didn't really understand the point of it all.  It probably didn't help that there was also a lot of symbolism and metaphorical language in the telling of Edgar's story that gave it a dreamlike feel that didn't match with the other 2

narratives.  In addition, similar to Sonja's story arc, Edgar's story arc was unresolved (basically the plot dropped off suddenly, which made the arc feel incomplete) — and both arcs seemed to be completely detached from the main story about their parents, Maria and Ernest. It almost felt like I was reading 3 different unrelated stories, except that the way the book was structured, each chapter alternated between the 3 narratives — so I would read 1 chapter from Maria's perspective, then the next chapter would be Edgar's perspective, then Sonja, then Maria, etc.  Given that I only truly liked Maria's story, this kind of structure made the entire read a tedious and frustrating one. 

Overall, I would classify this one under "it's probably me, not the book."  Hobson is an award-winning author and I certainly don't doubt his writing prowess (after all, as I stated above, I did like the writing), but this book just wasn't for me. While I don't regret reading it, I feel like I spent way too much time on it than I should have. Ah well…onto the next book!!