Reviews

Rainforest by Jenny Diski

sljbook's review

challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

shimmer's review

Very mixed feelings on this novel. There were aspects I really enjoyed, especially main character Mo's relationships to the spaces she inhabited and how control of those spaces was crucial to her identity in increasingly complicated ways. The sections of the novel focused on Mo alone were really compelling, both in London and in the jungle conducting her research. But there were also many scenes of characters delivering lectures to one another that felt like over-elaboration of what had already emerged more organically from the characters' actions and lives. And I couldn't help the novel made too much of sex, or made too much of it in ways that felt tired — professors wrecking their lives over lust for a student, another professor sleeping around the department. That whole thread of the story was pretty uninteresting to me, and the surprise used to set the end of the novel in motion that seemed so implausible that it really diminished the whole for me, even though I had enjoyed those other elements. Not the ending itself, but the means of making it happen.