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Chargement... Overthrow: A Novelpar Caleb Crain
Chargement...
Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. This was okay. But I feel like much circumlocution was happening - both in the entire book itself (it seemed like there was SO much that could have been cut from the book). The book didn't need to be this long. But also, the characters seemed to be vague about what they were about, The Working Group for the Refinement of the Perception of Feelings. Which is funny because a group of people who are about government transparency weren't very transparent. If the reader doesn't know what is going on, how can the reader connect to the book? I didn't really know who these characters are... but small details like one of them saying they loved the show 'Freaks & Geeks' is like a lifeboat to me. I loved reading about Chris volunteering after Katrina, but it doesn't even seem like his friends know anything about him. So there seems to be too much unnecessary here, but at the same time, not enough to connect. It's too muddled for me to make sense of (maybe I'm not smart enough to "get" this one), though I do like the point I thought the book was trying to make. But a clearer picture would have made it so much easier! One of the plot points itself it seemed Mr. Crain didn't want to commit to, and making it vague doesn't help. The last chapter is a bit like showing how a magic trick works, when the audience is already asleep. Even my writing about this book is probably muddled and doesn't make sense. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
Prix et récompenses
"One autumn night, as a grad student named Matthew is walking home from the subway, a handsome skateboarder catches his eye. Leif, mesmerizing and enigmatic, invites Matthew to meet his friends, who are experimenting with tarot cards. It's easier to know what's in other people's minds than most people realize, the friends claim. Do they believe in telepathy? Can they actually do it? Though Matthew should be writing his dissertation on the poetry of kingship, he soon finds himself falling in love with Leif - a poet of the internet age - and entangled with Leif's group as they visit the Occupy movement's encampment across the river, where they hope their ideas about radical empathy will help heal a divided world and destabilize the 1%. When the group falls afoul of a security contractor freelancing for the government, the news coverage, internet outrage, and legal repercussions damage the romances and alliances that hold the friends together, and complicate the faith the members of the group have - or, in some cases, don't have - in the powers they've been nurturing. Elspeth and Raleigh, two of Leif's oldest friends, will see if their relationship can weather the strains of criminal charges; Chris and Julia, who drifted into the group more recently, will have their loyalties tested; and Matthew, entranced by the man at the center of it all, will have to decide what he owes Leif and how much he's willing to give him. All six will be forced to reckon with the ambiguous nature of transparency and with the insidious natures of power and privilege. Overthrow is a story about the aftermath of the search for a new moral idealism, in a world where new controls on us - through technology, surveillance, the law- seem to be changing the nature and shape of the boundaries that we imagine around our selves"--Publisher description. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
Discussion en coursAucun
Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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An encounter with police leads Leif to think he's read the mind of one of the authorities. Testing that leads the group into illegal corners and divides the group.
Each chapter, of widely varying lengths, focuses on one member of the working group. With one exception, they are not people I was interested in knowing, although the characters did not lack depth. Crain is a solid, if verbose writer, although his love of using obscure words when simpler ones would have served the novel better was annoying and pulled me out of the story again and again. Crain's portrayal of Elspeth, the quiet girlfriend, the provider of space and support, who only comes into her own once everyone else is gone and she discovers herself, was the most compelling character and I would have liked more of her and less of the others. This was a lot longer than it should have been, and I say that as someone who enjoys a long, discursive novel, but rambling is not a trait that suits what is, at heart, a thriller.
After all that, though, I wouldn't be entirely against reading another novel by this author. ( )