Reviews and Comments

Joerg

joergr@bookwyrm.social

Joined 7 months, 2 weeks ago

Data scientist, avid book reader, elderly puppy herder

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reviewed Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri: Whereabouts (Hardcover, Knopf)

A marvelous new novel from the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Lowland and Interpreter …

Once a great author...

Dear stars, when has Jhumpa Lahiri, who had massive impact on me with "The Namesake", become a bland inconsequential Italian lady? And even more, how did this book get so many rave reviews?

Kay Chronister: Desert Creatures (2022, Erewhon Books)

In a world that has become treacherous and desiccated, Magdala has always had to fight …

That's a nope from me...

That's a nope from me. Don't get me wrong, it's really well written. But I feel like it's just a grab bag of themes pandering towards the NY Times bestseller list: Vague heavy-handed climate change message (that would have still been a nuclear bomb 35 years ago), Cormac McCarthy Western/desert dystopia, some magic thrown in, plenty of gratuitous violence and misogyny that stays gratuitous despite a strong woman lead character, three narratives set apart by some years with one change of narrator.