Review of 'Lightning Flowers' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
While some of the writing was crafted with a real sense of vulnerability and pacing, the armature Standefer chose to hang her story on did not connect enough to justify itself. The project itself hardly hung together. The promise ON THE COVER is that this will be a story about the exploration of the origins of the materials inside her defibrillator. I expected a political travelogue and I don't think I was wrong to. The trouble was she didn't have enough material to fill that project out. And hardly enough analysis to make it interesting.
But look, expectations aside, taking this book as it is, on its own terms, it is a somewhat compelling piece of whining. Yes, the American health care situation is preposterously bad; yes, white privilege factors into the systemic problems we face here... I agree with all of this, but other than one person's anecdote of …
While some of the writing was crafted with a real sense of vulnerability and pacing, the armature Standefer chose to hang her story on did not connect enough to justify itself. The project itself hardly hung together. The promise ON THE COVER is that this will be a story about the exploration of the origins of the materials inside her defibrillator. I expected a political travelogue and I don't think I was wrong to. The trouble was she didn't have enough material to fill that project out. And hardly enough analysis to make it interesting.
But look, expectations aside, taking this book as it is, on its own terms, it is a somewhat compelling piece of whining. Yes, the American health care situation is preposterously bad; yes, white privilege factors into the systemic problems we face here... I agree with all of this, but other than one person's anecdote of healthcare misery in America, this is just a story about one white girl steeped in the very privilege she rallies against while flying around the world getting mining tours and being taken care of by her parents and crying at literally everything. I don't have to love my narrator but I got so annoyed with this one it distracted from my experience with the material. I mean it's about her but god just so self-involved and not subtle about any of the subjects being addressed.
Standefer can craft compelling prose but this entire project's structure needed more time in the incubator. It would have given the irritating narrator a pass.