finished a book!
So, I've been a terrible reader for the last while. Too distracted by the internets. Haven't finished an actual new fiction book in ages. So I'm proud! I just finished The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi.
Anyone else read this one?
Jessamyn, TillyTilly, and the rest of the characters were well developed. I liked how Jessamyn and TillyTilly's relationship gradually grows and curdles. I loved it until about the last fifty pages or so. The book had been from the tight POV of the main character, eight year old Jessamyn, and suddenly near the end the POV shifts through several other characters, which I found jarring. And it felt very much like the author didn't quite know how to end her book, so rushed the climax and denouement. It lost much of the charm and threat when she shifted from Jessamyn's POV, and the end felt too predictable and so didn't match the rest of the novel. The final confrontation between Jessamyn and TillyTilly, which had been building for the entire book, lasted less than a paragraph. So it was unsatisfying. IT felt a little like a loss of nerve.
That said, for a first novel by an author under twenty, it was wonderful, and I recommend it.
Anyone else read this one?
Jessamyn, TillyTilly, and the rest of the characters were well developed. I liked how Jessamyn and TillyTilly's relationship gradually grows and curdles. I loved it until about the last fifty pages or so. The book had been from the tight POV of the main character, eight year old Jessamyn, and suddenly near the end the POV shifts through several other characters, which I found jarring. And it felt very much like the author didn't quite know how to end her book, so rushed the climax and denouement. It lost much of the charm and threat when she shifted from Jessamyn's POV, and the end felt too predictable and so didn't match the rest of the novel. The final confrontation between Jessamyn and TillyTilly, which had been building for the entire book, lasted less than a paragraph. So it was unsatisfying. IT felt a little like a loss of nerve.
That said, for a first novel by an author under twenty, it was wonderful, and I recommend it.