Reviews and Comments

Ich weiß ehrlich gesagt auch nicht genau, warum ich dieses Buch zu Ende gehört habe. Ich glaube, mich hat noch nie ein Roman so heruntergezogen. Vielleicht, weil ich mir eine komplette Meinung bilden wollte, bevor ich es rezensiere, vielleicht weil ich den Reading Challenge beenden will, ich weiß es nicht. Ich weiß nur, es geht sofort zurück an Audible, denn wenn ich hören will, wie mich eine kulturpessimistische, wohlhabende weiße Frau 16 Stunden lang beschimpft, dann muss ich auch nicht dafür Geld bezahlen. Ja, normalerweise trenne ich Stimme und Autorin, doch vieles von dem, was im Roman aufkommt, kürzlich erst die Theorie "Burkaverbot ist nur zum Zweck von besserer Gesichtserkennung" tweetet Berg auch. Dazu ist der Schreibstil einfach nichts, was sich auf so langer Strecke durchhalten lässt. Irgendwann ist es, na Sie wissen schon. Repetetiv. WTF. Hurra! Selbst den Sprechern, die ihren Job gut machen, merkt man an, dass der durchgehende eiskalte Zynismus sie streckenweise auslaugt. Ich bin jedenfalls froh, dass es um ist.

This is not what I expected but in a good way. There is simply no way to re-invent the wheel of the thriller genre and this author, refreshingly, does not try it, for example by sacrificing characters and plots just for cheap twists. Instead she takes known plot devices and combines them to something new. So there is a little bit [b:The Body|11574|The Body|Stephen King|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328182521i/11574.SY75.jpg|2334601] , there is a bit [b:The Church of Dead Girls|215605|The Church of Dead Girls|Stephen Dobyns|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1392984185i/215605.SY75.jpg|1316738], there is mystery and a touch of horror and an unreliable yet never annoyingly deceptive narrator. Very satisfying when all loose threads come together in the end and worth a re-read later.

The audiobook is a delightful hearing experience because Andrew Scott (I knew him as Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes) reads the 2016 parts in such a very natural way of speaking I have not yet experienced in this quality. (A little too good sometimes: when you turn up your device to understand the lower, muttered parts you get a shock when he suddenly gets louder.)

A short summary would be "the better Lovely Bones" - a slow analysis of family dynamics sparked by the death of a teenager. While here a lot of things are done better which I found tedious in Lovely Bones and welcomed that there is a novel dealing with the struggles of second generation immigration I still could not really warm up with the writing style. Every sentence is hammered into perfection with a clear purpose and the core message (do not shape your children after your expectations) repeated so often that it somehow numbed me. I don't even know if you can even criticise a novel for being be too carefully crafted, but that's how it felt to me.

I've been a great Monty Python fan since my teenage years but somehow never really knew much about the background of the troupé. An insight gives Eric Idles fantastic biography which is not only so interesting because of his fame with the Pythons. Idle describes his youth in a rural coast town in England, the hardships of boarding school and how he discovered his talent and love for comedy and his rise to fame with Monty Python which happened, as it does so often, coincidentally. What really made me respect Idle is that he does not smooth over what early fame did to him and how he in the end coped with it - by keeping his feet firmly on the ground and never stopping to laugh about himself. You will also learn quite a lot about popular culture and entertainment industry spanning from the late 60s up until now, including the deep friendships Idle had with icons like George Harrison and Robin Williams - and of course with all the other Pythons. And now for something completely different!

Anders als bei Stephen King, bei dem ich die Kurzgeschichten fast immer besser finde, als seine Romane, ist das bei John Ajvide Lindqvist wohl umgekehrt. Ich finde, dass es seinen Geschichten nicht guttut, in das kurze Format gepresst zu werden. Insbesondere die letzte ist eigentlich eher eine Fortsetzung von "So ruhet in Frieden" und macht das Buch retrospektiv nicht unbedingt besser. Einige Ausnahme ist die Geschichte "Grenze", deren Verfilmung ich kürzlich sehen konnte - genau wie "So finster die Nacht" eine unbedingte Empfehlung.

The short stories and novellas of Stephen King is what ultimately drew me as Constant Reader to him and I think they keep being his forte as of today. "Full Dark, No Stars" contains four of his, in my opinion, best stories, especially as they mostly deal with the tragedy and horrors of the human mind and not the "monster under the bed". My favourite story, which I re-read recently is "A Strong Marriage" - one of the few novellas where it does not matter that you know the premise (a woman finds out that her husband is a serial killer). It's one of the strongest examples of characterisation in fiction I know and if you only ever read one story of Stephen King, it should be this one.

Random bookstore find and as usual this bears the risk of falling for an overly enthusiastic blurb on the back. What a waste of time. Forgettable characters which are so shallow that I had enormous differences to keep them apart from each other, a confusing and trite crime plot, an unsatisfying end.

I have no idea why this book was so popular. One explanation may be the language. As the setting is American I assumed it was an American author but I only read now that it was not originally published in English but is a translation from Romanian. Actually one of the most translated books in the world, which absolutely baffles me. Maybe it's really just that the English translation is so horrible (and also full of mistakes, e. g. the movie "Spaceball"). That may explain the bland style, the stiff dialogues and the similar voices. But as it does not make the plot more interesting I am not willing to give this bore another try in German to find out.