i’ve only read three but the four winds and night road were both wild for this. the absolute trauma she heaped on one character in night road almost ended up being comical.Yeah every book of hers is one she could've finished about 3 miseries earlier
It is absolutely relentless. I think for me, Four Winds was the absolute worst, just when you think something good is about to happen along comes more misery! I read The Women last year, quite enjoyed it but there's a lot of misery in it.I finished The Great Alone by Kristen Hannah last night and, while I didn’t hate it, I think I'm going to have to put her in the “authors everyone else loves but I don’t get” box along with Sally Rooney.
I just can’t cope with the relentless misery she heaps on her characters. Maybe if there was a bit more light and shade or if it wasn’t so obvious that things were going to go wrong I might like it more, but when you know every scenario is going to end in the worst possible way I stop caring! I quite liked The Great Alone at first but trudged through the last 3rd of it.
Disclaimer - The Women is still on my Amazon wish list so I reserve the right to buy it if it ever goes on a 99p offer and I become falsely optimistic that it might be the book that makes me love her!
True, although I sort of feel A Little Life is a bit more justified in the heaping on of the misery as at least there’s a sort of logic to it. Kristen Hannah’s characters on the other hand just seem to be victims of never ending, catastrophic, unconnected bits of bad luck!
backman’s writing, as always, remains wonderful and involving, and i’m intrigued as to what it’s all brewing up to.It can be used to good effect. The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst does it really well and the terribleness of the poem helps the later parts of the book make sense.you’ve hit of my very niche writing icks here - i hate when there’s a character who is meant to be an amazing author or a poet or something, and an excerpt of “their” writing is included…. and it’s just not very good
reading us against you and i don’t think i’ve been as attached to a fictional character ever as i am to benji. why can’t good things happen to him?! why can’t he just be happy?!?
Well yes, my husband kindly bought tickets for us to go, then I politely asked him to get a refund because we live in the NE so would need to add travel and accommodation on top.
I've just finished The Winners and it's simultaneously my favourite and least favourite of the three? Like it's so long and there is so much time with so many characters that I love AND some new ones, and at the same time it's SO LONG and really didn't need to be, like it's 700 pages of 'these towns really like hockey'. BUT then I cried when it ended? It doesn't make any sense.
I feel that about all FB books tbh. They shouldn't affect me in the way they do, but they do. I feel like he's a wizard that is putting something illegal into his books.
I'm 70% through and I LOVE it. Keep with it, I think it becomes quite heart warming.
I can relate. I didn’t enjoy it.
That’s kind of how I felt about Beartown. I struggled with the first half of the book (my friend gave up) but then by the end I was
