Reviews
Crying, sobbing.
It was perfect, just absolutely perfect and I loved it. The writing is so beautiful and raw at times, most of it is highlighted. My heart hurts, in a way.. in a good way? I don't know. Anyways, thank you casper for showing me this book, ily. ❤️
читала в самолете и много думала про "взрослые книги" - какими они кажутся теперь вымученными, искусствеными, и как мне стало неинтересно их читать. все эти игры в стилистику, красивости. все эти невротизированные персонажи и их фрустрации. обязательно bitter end - а то как-то некруто заканчивать историю хорошо. не понимаю, почему в моем подростковом фэнтези шестнадцатилетние герои получаюся гораздо умнее, взрослее, зрелее, чем эти пятидесятилетние, но, пожалуй, продолжу-ка я читать янг адалт
I really wanted to like The Crane Wife, being a fan of Patrick Ness's YA work, but this was like reading Harry Potter and then suffering through The Casual Vacancy -- the magic just wasn't there. Flat out: the book was boring. The writing attempted poetry without actually achieving it, and in the end, there just wasn't enough plot to sustain the glacially slow story. The stories of the lady and the volcano just weren't *interesting* -- nothing HAPPENED for hundreds of pages at a time. The inscrutable Asian character trope felt mildly offensive and lazy, and ending with the main character ~writing the book that's the story you just read~ is a trope that's been done so many times it feels amateurish, and I expected more from Ness. This is such a pity, because otherwise I've really enjoyed this author's work.
Highlights
He would picture himself there, decades and an ocean and a continent away, under a beautiful blue sky, in the impossible silence of being pushed along a road on his back, under the watchful, terrified eyes of dozens of co-tellers, and because he could see it, and because they could, too, in all their different versions, as their lives crossed each other and bound together in what [he] could only describe as a mutual embrace, that moment still happened. It was always still happening.
And for that eternally repeated instant, pain was at bay, fear was held off, and everything was astonishment and wonder.
There were as many truths – overlapping, stewed together – as there were tellers. The truth mattered less than the story’s life. A story forgotten died. A story remembered not only lived, but grew.
But this, this moment here, this moment was like those, and more so. The gravely injured bird and him in a frozen back garden that could have been the borders of the known universe for all he knew. It was in places like this that eternity happened.
He moved with instinct, feeling somehow that if he hesitated, it – whatever it might be – would somehow slip away, dissipate like a forgotten love.
What actually woke him was the unearthly sound itself – a mournful shatter of frozen midnight falling to earth to pierce his heart and lodge there forever, never to move, never to melt.
This book appears on the shelf 📱owned (kindle) 🔖🫧
This book appears on the shelf Paranormal mystery and romance
