Review of 'Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
While on vacation, I picked this up in a bookstore while browsing because I liked the cover (yeah, I'm that person). I hadn't heard of it, or this author, before. It was my third quick read of the vacation. Having finished the book, I gather that it's rather polarizing here on goodreads.
I quite liked it but I can also see why others might not. Some unstructured thoughts:
1. The characters are very superficial in that we don't really know them -- we know about them, we know about their histories (a little, anyway), but we don't really know about their feelings or their internal crises; we can't even glean anything from discourse because there's very little dialogue. In the context of a comedy, I liked this -- it gives the narrator more opportunity to highlight the absurdity of characters' behavior.
2. This book highlights the absurdity of Christianity but, …
While on vacation, I picked this up in a bookstore while browsing because I liked the cover (yeah, I'm that person). I hadn't heard of it, or this author, before. It was my third quick read of the vacation. Having finished the book, I gather that it's rather polarizing here on goodreads.
I quite liked it but I can also see why others might not. Some unstructured thoughts:
1. The characters are very superficial in that we don't really know them -- we know about them, we know about their histories (a little, anyway), but we don't really know about their feelings or their internal crises; we can't even glean anything from discourse because there's very little dialogue. In the context of a comedy, I liked this -- it gives the narrator more opportunity to highlight the absurdity of characters' behavior.
2. This book highlights the absurdity of Christianity but, in the end, embraces ideals that Christians often uphold as "Christian". It's really about how we find meaning in life -- which may, but also may not, happen through religious belief.
3. I laughed out loud a few times. I know it's not always realistic, but the nice thing about comedy is that it doesn't have to be -- characters, situations and institutions are exaggerated, prototypic rather than realistic. We read our own experience onto it. It is both more and less personal. It's meant to be absurd. And it's funny.