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A review by smashmo
The Heart by Maylis de Kerangal
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Ohhhh, I so badly wanted to be in LOVE with this book. But here we are, and I am so torn on how to rate it. There are so many good things in here, but the negatives, though few, drove me crazy.
I absolutely loved what this story was about and how we got to examine one big event affecting many different people in many different ways. I eat that up! And the people we explore range from people close to the death of the young man, to people who didn't even have contact with him. I especially enjoyed following the parents in their grief. As someone who is not a parent, let alone one who has had a child die, the fact the author could really make me empathize with them in a way I didn't realize I could was amazing. I'm sure many other reviewers agree that this authors prose is beautiful; purple to the extreme. On top of all that, it was really interesting to learn in a little more detail all the steps that go in to an organ transplant.
Now for the terrible. As a character driven reader, I like knowing someone's backstory. But I also appreciate that backstory being relevant. There were a couple times that the backstory just wasn't needed at all. Example: I did not need to know how/why that one guy ended up with his girlfriend, and the whole thing seemed to just lead up to "she's an actress, but he performs in a different sort of theatre." We could have gotten the same message in the author's same stylistic way with much less words.
And speaking of less words...the run on sentences really REALLY got to me. At first I thought it was really interesting and fun, but the more I read, the more annoyed I was at having to decipher the meaning of the sentence. I often found myself re-reading whole pages and skipping big chunks just to get to the over all meaning behind the words. I think this is what drove me to insanity and why it took me so long to finish this book. I was enjoying the events as a whole, but the delivery made me cringe at the thought of picking it back up.
I might come back to this in a couple years and re-read it as I now know what to expect, and will probably enjoy it more
I absolutely loved what this story was about and how we got to examine one big event affecting many different people in many different ways. I eat that up! And the people we explore range from people close to the death of the young man, to people who didn't even have contact with him. I especially enjoyed following the parents in their grief. As someone who is not a parent, let alone one who has had a child die, the fact the author could really make me empathize with them in a way I didn't realize I could was amazing. I'm sure many other reviewers agree that this authors prose is beautiful; purple to the extreme. On top of all that, it was really interesting to learn in a little more detail all the steps that go in to an organ transplant.
Now for the terrible. As a character driven reader, I like knowing someone's backstory. But I also appreciate that backstory being relevant. There were a couple times that the backstory just wasn't needed at all. Example: I did not need to know how/why that one guy ended up with his girlfriend, and the whole thing seemed to just lead up to "she's an actress, but he performs in a different sort of theatre." We could have gotten the same message in the author's same stylistic way with much less words.
And speaking of less words...the run on sentences really REALLY got to me. At first I thought it was really interesting and fun, but the more I read, the more annoyed I was at having to decipher the meaning of the sentence. I often found myself re-reading whole pages and skipping big chunks just to get to the over all meaning behind the words. I think this is what drove me to insanity and why it took me so long to finish this book. I was enjoying the events as a whole, but the delivery made me cringe at the thought of picking it back up.
I might come back to this in a couple years and re-read it as I now know what to expect, and will probably enjoy it more