evitacademia's reviews
71 reviews

It's heartbreaking. Maybe even the original, the founding father of the "eccentric teacher and students without a father figure or other ailments" trope and it was stunningly executed. I felt for Neil, I felt for Todd. The rest of the boys were either boring or straight up crude and annoying. I hated the misogyny exhibited by both the boys and Mr. Keating and I'll just blame it on the time, but it still leaves a bitter taste, ruining the masterful atmosphere. It was short, precise and thus, even more painful. Like a stab with a knife, quick and debilitating. And, of course, I adored the language.

Basically, the horrors of academia but it still manages to be an academic book. Talk about inner conflict. To love what your enemy consists of. And you cannot tell me there wasn't more between Todd and Neil. I'll have to watch the movie now and lose myself in the story again.

I picked up this book for a reset after my last book, expecting a simple and forgettable story. In that directive, I was immensely disappointed and therefore, wholly surprised and impressed with the book. The language is so simple, which makes sense since the narrators are young teenagers. The ability to create wordings you feel in your bones with such simple language is extraordinary. I found so many quote-worthy lines and I also really loved the approach to writing from Byatts perspective when she was not able to think straight. It was so artistic and creative. Whenever a situation was incredibly fearful and tense, the execution was so masterly done, it felt like a panic's transcript. Hettys and just everyone's spiral towards the end was so impressively done, the way she kept repeating she's guilty or how everything's always happening over and over again. So skillful. It was quick to get through and still managed to leave a lasting impression.

I've always had a knack for apocalyptic stories and this one was a great one. Not only did we find out what the Tox is, we got to see how it cruelly altered the entire island and therefore the lives of 100 girls. The dynamic between the girls is a battle of survival and the acknowledgement of former friendship, welted together in this surreal world. Hetty was perfectly flawed, chaotic and likeable, Reese was complicated and capable of growing on you and Byatt was warm and tragic. Girls, in this book, got to be messy. They got to be without a spectator. And I would've never imagined

that there's some kind of a happy end, since the whole story seemed doomed and their fate sealed. But that was a cliffhanger i didn't even mind because at least it didn't end in the three girl's death.

And I loved the map!!!!

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

"but we've all lost things, eyes and hands and last names." (P. 19)

"The Tox didn't just happen to us. It happened to everything." (P. 60)

"and oh god I forgot        I forgot how it hurts" (P. 121)

"Water and shoreline born new every day. Everything what it wants to be. Everything mine. I'm buried there no matter where I go." (P. 175)

"This has always already happened." (P. 179)

"There's no room to feel bad. If I feel that, I have to feel everything else." (P. 195)

"Byatt was rhe one who put the bones in my body." (P. 209)

"I'm alone but the kind of alone where you aren't where you can feel the other girls behind you running laughing chattering and it's okay that you're by yourself on the beach because all you have to do is turn around and there they'll be

But I don't turn around" (p. 231, byatts perspective, that's why is a grammatical nightmare)

"this is fracture this is breaking this is an ending" (p. 242)

"The things I've done here, the bodies I've felt under my hands." (P. 272)

I started this exactly a year ago, abandoned it and came back only to be disappointed. And i feel really mean saying that so I need to say: the book wasn't for me, i didn't like the poems, but that doesn't mean they can't be enlightening to others. As long as words touch at least one person, even if that's just yourself, they should be written. So I'm glad this was written, I just wish I hadn't read it

I started the book with enthusiasm, continued it with disgust and ended it in awe. 
The first things that struck me were the narrator(s!!) and the writing style. Seeing a POV from a whole homogenous group of people, almost merging into one was so interesting, but they were unbearable. The writing was specific, poetic and moldy. So the metaphors and descriptions were made with skill and precision, but I didn't like the metaphors and descriptions in the first place. The book focused so much on useless and uninteresting digressions about fish flies or Trip, which I could not care for less. It's racist, crude and misogynistic, I hate reading about little boys and I hate reading from the perspective of little boys. The book stinks, almost literally, of discomfort from hot breath or sweaty pillows. The boys are lewd, the book is offensive and almost always are the girls portrayed to be some tragic sexual desire. 
The girls lived an inexplicably tragic and short life and what I think was done very well was the reaction of the public and how they dared to appropriate their deaths, make it into whatever they wanted it to be. The girls were robbed. And the book, with its manic obsession and exhibits, is a prime example of that. And I do not care if that was the point. I don't care if the author sought to shine light towards an ugly part of society, the way the girls were treated and the way the boys treated, the infested nature of this book, I do not care because it was harmful and stereotypical. If you seek to educate, don't make up pain in such a way without explaining why this was necessary. The only reason it's getting 3 stars is because I loved the writing and so many sentiments are written beautifully and quotable. A lot of things resonated with me and worded things I have never been able to put into words.

Ich hab noch nie eine Biographie gelesen und spiele schon fast mit dem Gedanken, keine andere, besonders über Hannah Arendt zu lesen, weil diese so gut war. Es war das perfekte Gemisch aus den theoretischen Errungenschaften ihrer Philosophie, bei denen der Inhalt meines Textmarkers an die Grenzen getrieben wurde, und ihrem persönlichen Leben, ihren Gedanken und Emotionen. Wie Alois Prinz selbst gesagt hat, ist ihre Philosophie und ihre Person unzertrennlich voneinander und das Gefühl ist beim Lesen auch vermittelt worden. Noch dazu waren ihre Erkenntnisse super erklärt, man hat selbst die kompliziertesten Gedanken mit den ersten paar Lesedurchläufen verstanden und wurde gleichzeitig zu eigenem Nachdenken angeregt. 
Ich fühle mich 

1. In meinem Verständnis der Welt aus den Fugen gehoben (bewusst: im Verständnis, nicht im Verstand), es erscheint mir alles ein wenig schwammig und voller als zuvor, was hoffentlich oder wahrscheinlich ein temporäres Gefühl mit Aussicht auf dramatische Besserung ist. Wie wenn man eine alte Brille ablegt, kurz verschwommen sieht, und dann die neue Brille mit angepassten Gläsern wieder aufsetzt.

2. In meinem Verehrungswahn zu Hannah Arendt bestätigt. Auf eine gesunde Art und Weise. Nicht nur als Philosophin, wie ich sie beschränkt vorher gekannt habe, sondern auch ihre Person erscheint mir jetzt unglaublich interessant und pikant. Eigentlich will ich das Buch wie eine Bibel mit mir rumtragen und meine Gedanken damit abwägen, bevor ich irgendwem irgendwas sage. Aber nicht auf abhängige Weise (cue: Jaspers)

Prinz und Arendt, ihr seid es einfach.

All I know is that this book has made me devastatingly unsure. It questions the foundation of everything, it discusses and it argues and then: murder. 
I found the spell with the painting to be so original and interesting and the whole book is riddled with quote-worthy sentences (epigramms, which is one of the words you encounter a lot of times (like misshapen or sodden) that I probably almost emptied my Highlighter. 
Of course, the book and it's characters are complicated. Perfectly complicated so that you're not sure how likeable they really are to you and that is so rarely executed this well. Henry had some points sometimes and made actually good arguments. However, I could've done without the persistent and marring (another word) misogyny. Basil was probably the only character one felt for and the unrequited romance between him and Dorian made me think of Wilde himself and how that's maybe how he has felt about men. 
It is brilliant. It is brave and morose. But I cannot, with good conscience give it 5 stars. I also won't be a bigot and gloss over the absolute artistry so 4 stars it is. Will be memorizing passages to quote them when I'm drunk at someone's house.

Der Kontrast zwischen der schönen Vorstellung am Anfang und wie ihr Leben dann tatsächlich in jungen Jahren ablief ist wirklich herzzerbrechend. Sie hatte richtiges Potential und dann kam eine seelenzerstörerische Stadt wie Gropiusstadt, die leidenschaftlich Kinder quält. Ihre Jugend begann aus konstantem "Hocharbeiten" aber in Wirklichkeit stufte sie konstant ab, merkte das aber natürlich erst mal gar nicht. Die Bilder machten die Geschichte auf unangenehme und gruselige Weise real und von ihren ganzen hoffnungslose Entzügen zu lesen war unglaublich nervenaufreibend. Und ich weiß nicht, wie oft ich die Wörter "urig", "H" oder "wahnsinnig" gelesen habe. 
Leider gibt es gehäufte Ausländerfeindlichkeit und Homophobie, aber das ist ja auch kein Fiktionsbuch, das geschrieben wurde, um Leuten zu gefallen. Für die Aufklärung und Schadensprävention ist es auf jeden Fall wichtig.

I put off reading this book for a long time, stupidly, because it was popular. How could something that appeals to so many be so individually touching? And I think that question was answered by the book. It's a lot more complex than that.

The writing is so spot on, so precise, accurate and confident and I think it's that that made it so easy to breeze through. Though that precision turned into slight dryness at the end but that is just the style. 
The pacing was amazing. Just when you started to tire of the setting, the topic or perspective changed abruptly enough to keep you glued. And I loved the perspective of hearing it all from Evelyn Hugo. It was raw, it was mesmerizing. But also grotesque and shocking. And that isn't even an Oxymoron. It just coexists. 
The plottwists actually hit me. Her queerness actually resonates and aches. Her complexity (both Evelyn's and Monique's) enlightens. Hearing it all from Evelyn's mouth but from Monique's hands opens up the book to a sensational perspective, an engrossing story. 
Evelyn was playing a chess game, tricking and seducing to get her where she wanted to be, and at the end, she didn't win, rather she was the last figurine standing. 

There are the crimson crimes of high society, the star's fatal wounds; then this book is the literary and mesmerizing autopsy.

I always love me a little lesbian romcom where no one has yet to come out and no one dies. This is a good example of a lighthearted book for a quick read without being too dull, it still has its deep and dark moments. It's nothing life-changing and also a little stereotypical, everything seems a little easier than it would be in real life and the language is really simple but I still enjoyed it. I love Molly's and Alex's chemistry and I'm glad I've read it.

I think this book altered my brain chemistry in a doomful way. I will never read a book like this again and I know it. But maybe that's a good thing, because it was so dense that I feel like reading another book like that will have me bursting at the seams. 
The way it's written, the wording and the endless descriptions and examples that often seemed so obscure and out of place made the book what it is. Words like relatable, profound, heartbreaking, complex or intimate all apply but i don't think any word can describe this book. Probably the only person who can do that is Donna Tartt herself. Her writing is mesmerizing and it's so intricate in a way that makes me feel enlightened and stupid at the same time like a child who learns how much about the world it doesn't know and gets overwhelmed. But it's also comforting: I don't know everything nor will I ever know everything and i dont have to know everything. I liked not knowing what she was talking about a lot of the time. References to systems I wasn't familiar with, paintings I didn't know, names I didn't recognize. 

Theo's life is made of people replacing each other: his primary caregiver (his mother, then his father, then Hobie) and his brother (Andy, then Boris). And at the end, he was with the people that will stay with him. Granted, Andy and his mother didn't leave him just because they wanted. And his life is built by destruction, it's tranquilized by terror, his existence is so tragically and gruesomely poetic. I loved hobie, his comforting character and home, i loved reading about the furniture. I loved loved loved how every tiny detail was loaded with meaning throughout the entire book in an exhausting but satisfying way and im already sorry to read any other book now cause it will feel inevitably disappointing and underwhelming after having read this. I took so many photos of the pages because I like to do that with pages i find touching or interesting or incredibly written or relatable and my entire photo album of that is filled with the goldfinch. It reminded me of "a little life" so much but it also was its very own. It was the kind of book i would give 5 stars... but...

Despite (or maybe because of) it being brilliant, life-changing, one-of-a-kind, my relationship to the book was reliably distant and at times, hostile. Sometimes (!) the words seemed arbitrary and written for the sake of being jotted down. They gave me a headache when they were chasing each other in suffocating rants that totaled up to mean nothing! So many words, so little said! 
The next thing making me feel upset is not the books fault but i am so frustrated over knowing i cant and will never be able to write like that. Its actively making me write less because i know whatever I produce wont live up to that. But maybe when i reach whatever middle zone theo was talking about, i will be able to write how I was meant to write.
Also: everyone talks the same! Their way of digressing, giving extensive details and examples is so alike its uncanny and unrealistic.
Boris being so offensive to groups that neither he nor Donna should be offensive to was disturbing. Losing my respect for a book like this broke my heart. It took me months to finish because it's easily abandoned, overwhelming. Its so dense, so thick, like trying to move through black tar that you forget to enjoy it. I love the book but i dont like it. So, not a 5 star read, but one i will never forget with characters and knowledge I will find in real life and then feel exhilarated at a piece of art coming to life right before me.