gracescanlon's reviews
729 reviews

It's...fine.

That's the trouble, actually. It's fine. I could only read this before bed, because it kept putting me to sleep. That is, in a small way, also a compliment - Allende's prose, its rhythm, is soothing. But the book is also boring boring boring.

I've been trying to read more diverse books. Even so, Allende in general has been on my TBR, as a renowned female South American author. However, leaving the country where the book is set unnamed was frustrating to me. I've learned since abandoning this book that it's set in Chile, but as I read it, the vagueness of the location irked me. I want to know more about other places. Leaving Violeta's setting unspecified was counterproductive to that - it just wasn't a choice I liked or appreciated. I'm quite aware that that's a personal problem, and that Allende's choice was purposeful and valid, but I don't have to like it.

The amount of people in the reviews who were at all surprised as to Camilo's identity is baffling to me. It's so blatantly obvious to me that he's her grandson, or at the very least a grandson-like person in her life. Y'all need to work on reading comprehension.

Violeta seems, to me, aimless - an odd sensation, given it's the story of a woman's life that spanned throughout tumultuous times. But even 35% through the book, Violeta has only been "involved" with contemporary world events tangentially, if at all. 

Also, the older Violeta telling the story has a little personality, but her younger self has very little. Honestly, the side characters were all more interesting than she was, from Torito and the Rivases to her aunts and Miss Taylor. 

So, ultimately, I didn't care, don't care, can't care. I'll be donating or selling this book.

I do love a time-slip romance — and what a lovely, lovely ending! 

Other favorite features: 

Just lost interest, and didn’t want to fall into a reading slump. 

Whizzed on by! I kept making the mistake of picking this up within an hour of my self-imposed bedtime, but at least that meant I enjoyed it longer. Today, though, I sat and read more than half this book. What a ride! Honestly, the only thing I can think would improve it would be more depth, specifically into the complexities of Lon and his vendetta. Eerie, tense, and heartwrenching, with a main character who isn't insufferable - a tendency that's unfortunately too common in YA (and other fiction too, honestly).

Yawn.

The main character, Selin, could be interesting — there are moments in the book that mirror Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot. However, unlike Dostoyevsky’s work, Batuman’s version lacks any emotion from the main character and evokes none in the reader. Selin tells and tells us every tiny detail of her freshman year at university, without expounding upon anything interesting about it, if she mentions anything interesting at all. 

I struggled with how Selin got into Harvard, as I didn’t see any evidence of particular intelligence, talent, or originality that would’ve made her an attractive applicant to the university. She was naive and literal, and so passive that unless the book contained major character growth or even some kind of character arc, it was bound to be dull — a whole lot of nothing in too many words.