This
article appeared in the Guardian in 2011 when the book was first published. It
is written by Jane Smiley a writer herself who also occasionally reviews books
for the Guardian. The novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize and won
many others. It is a new twist on a classic western and in my opinion a very
funny and thought provoking book.
She starts her review out by picking
out a sentence from the first chapter that she found rather gruesome and then
compared that to one of the blurbs which praised the book on being hilarious.
With this she implies that the story is misrepresented and if you are looking
for something really funny here you will only find terrible crimes and
therefore will be disappointed. From this, it already seems clear that she did
not really like the book and want to show it in a bad light. I would not say
that judging a book by its first page is a very smart thing, especially if you
have to write a professional review.
In the next few paragraphs she gives
a summary of the plot, picking out random, and many times unimportant pieces to
prove her opinion of this being a story made up of unconnected chapters without
any personal growth in the characters. At one point she mentions the lack of
“meticulous description of Oregon and California in 1851” as a negative, which
is confusing as the novel focuses on the characters and their journey and thus
the scenery is not very important and actually would take away from the book.
As someone who read the book, this is very strange to me, and I understand that
she wants to prove her point. From my point of view, however, this seems as if
she just flipped through the book after establishing in the first chapter that
she did not like it and consequently picked out arbitrary things to criticize.
If you have not read the book, her arguments might seem well supported, but
otherwise they stand on weak legs.
She does not give too much
background about the author or the novel and even though she organized her
writing into paragraphs, the organization is not very logical. Her tone is on
the more formal side and she seems to avoid stating her opinion clearly and rather
implies it in her text. I appreciate that she lets the reader draw conclusions
from the evidence she provides, however flawed they might be.
It is obvious that
personally I liked the book, however, it is not her bad opinion that disturbs
me in this review, but the sheer laziness that shines through her lines. She
even in a way admits that she did not pay too much attention to the book in her
last paragraph, packaged up in an elaborate train metaphor. In my opinion a
reviewer has to have an open mind, at least to some extent, and any reader has
to put something into a book to get something out of it.
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jul/15/sisters-brothers-patrick-dewitt-review
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