Speak No Evil
Reviews

It is certainly a devastating story of homophobia and racism and identity with a tragic end that is in no doubt from the very beginning. It's a powerful story and an important one that tackles violence and prejudice and the consequences of making our own feelings and desires more important than those of others. I wouldn't dream of disputing any of these facts, they're basically incontestable (or should be). My problem lies with the very factor that has sent other reviewers into rhapsodies, and that is the writing. It's highly stylized, with little punctuation and a free-form structure that breaks down and challenges usual reading practice - so far so good, I love experimental writing, whatever barrier you want to break I'm right there with you. But it had to be effective (and affective), it has to work. And this just didn't work for me at all. The prose developed an overbearing cadence that made it feel repetitive and sucked all the life out of the characters and events. Intellectually I could acknowledge the terrible tragedy but by the time events emerged the prose had sapped all emotion from me but irritation by blurring both people and places, the writing just swept the actual story away and buried it so that it could hardly be understood let alone felt. It also created a very childlike tone, and while the characters are young the writing felt like the unadorned recitation of a much younger person, an endless procession of and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened without pause for breath or thought or significant development. In the end it was a case of style over substance, the substance is there in the hard-hitting events but the style meant that it was just barely skimmed.










