Book Synopsis:
Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.
Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.
My Review:
3.5 stars. We read this book in my English class. It was enjoyable but also pretty confusing. Magical realism is not a genre I’ve read before and I don’t think I’d understand as much of it if my teacher wasn’t explaining things to us and giving us background info.
I’ll start with the things I didn’t really like about the book. First, the characters. Characters are my favorite parts of books I read; I love fleshed-out, complex characters with a lot of personality. In this book, the characters feel a little flat. I didn’t really feel emotionally attached to any of them. Out of the main characters, the only one you really learn much about personally-wise is the narrator, but even he still feels a little boring. With some books I read, I immediately get attached and love the characters, but this book didn’t do that for me. Maybe this is because it’s told as a memory, so the actions/mannerisms of other characters aren’t described in detail, but I thought the characters could’ve been better.
Another thing I didn’t like was that things weren’t explained very much. This isn’t necessarily an issue with the book, but just my personal preference. Like I said before, I don’t read magical realism, this is the first book of that genre I’ve read. I understand that the point of magical realism is that magical elements are written about in a very casual, matter-of-fact way, but there were still some things I was hoping would be at least partially explained by the end, like what/who the Hempstocks were or what the place with the orange sky was and how it got to be on the Hempstock farm. When I got to the end, I still had a lot of the same questions I had throughout my reading. While this did spark a lot of discussions in class, I am the type of person who wants explanations for things.
I’ve seen some other reviewers talk about the symbolism of childhood and innocence in this book, but I don’t see any of that. Maybe it’s just because I’m not very good at understanding symbolism in fiction in general, but I don’t really see how this book has that much symbolism. I guess some of the symbolism has to do with the fact that the two main characters, the narrator and Lettie, are kids, and the fact that part of the villain’s downfall was because she was an adult or something, but I don’t know.
Speaking of the villain, Ursula Monkton, that’s something I thought was done well. She was written to be unlikeable, and she was. I hated her, and was happy she got destroyed by the hunger birds at the end of the book. She kind of reminded me of Umbridge from Harry Potter, who I hate with a passion, especially in the way they both talk very sweetly and innocently but are actually evil.
Another thing I liked was the plot. There were times during the book that I thought were pretty intense. One of these times was when the narrator ran away from home and was running, soaked and scared, in the middle of the night. I could feel the intensity and danger of the situation. Then, when Ursula Monkton showed up, I was shocked and wanted her to leave, just like the narrator.
In conclusion, this book was not my favorite, but it wasn’t bad. I haven’t come out of this reading experience feeling anything in particular. It was interesting, and I don’t regret reading it, but I wouldn’t re-read it. If this is a genre you enjoy and a premise that sounds interesting to you, then you might enjoy it more than me, but it’s not making any of my favorite book lists.
In terms of age rating, this book has some pretty dark parts that might be really sad or hard for some people to read. There's also a part that kind of describes something inappropriate, so I'd say teens and up for this book. It has no bad language, though.
Коментарі