Reviews and Comments

I am a sucker for a good revenge story, and this one started off well. The cause is revenge worthy, but the execution is questionable. Pun intended. I take offence in the guilt by association. As much as almost all victims are arseholes, that shouldn’t be punishable by death. And especially the reasoning what someone maybe MIGHT do if he get’s the chance doesn’t call for a preemptive strike. That being said: I did delight in Grace’s latent misanthropy. I had fun with her planning and preparing and her witty commentary. But I was left a bit unsatisfied. The whole story was a bit clinical. I guess I wanted more gleeing and relishing, after all, isn’t that what revenge is about? (What does that requirement make me?)

Four people in the search for love, restricted by society, circumstances and actual confinement - and bound to each other by an ailment. The book was in parts hard to read. Nothing graphical, but T. C. Boyle's description did everything to fan a vivid imagination. In parts it was comical, when the captive tried to escape its situation. But mostly it was tragic: the longing for change, the limitations of methods, the dreams that can't be made true.

A meticulous, gripping and infuriating account of an accomplished life destroyed by ideology, paranoia, wounded vanity and revenge.