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bookwyrmm's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
From the inside cover: "Erotic Literature". My opinion: it's real bad.
The singular positive: this writer has good writing skills, a strong and developed narrative voice, and some sentences were even quite beautiful.
I finished reading this so I could exorcise it from me. It felt like an edge-lord's novel. "Deep". For a book published in 2016, it sure did contain tw tw tw this refugee pediatrician from Germany in New York is a weirdo, and by that I mean pedo who also fucks the moms, and also a Nazi because obv and also crossdresses to masturbate to his photo of Hitler because he's a gross weirdo, you see
I'm not saying you can't have that in your novel, just that you'd better done something to deserve that in your story. Mostly it just feels like it is there because the author said that it was going to be in there. Given the cast of "good" people end the story in the suburbs, it certainly was lead up to that conclusion.
Ran across this by random chance. If you suffer from the same odds of fate: don't. There are better bad books. There are good books. This one is not worth your time.
The singular positive: this writer has good writing skills, a strong and developed narrative voice, and some sentences were even quite beautiful.
I finished reading this so I could exorcise it from me. It felt like an edge-lord's novel. "Deep". For a book published in 2016, it sure did contain tw tw tw this refugee pediatrician from Germany in New York is a weirdo, and by that I mean pedo who also fucks the moms, and also a Nazi because obv and also crossdresses to masturbate to his photo of Hitler because he's a gross weirdo, you see
I'm not saying you can't have that in your novel, just that you'd better done something to deserve that in your story. Mostly it just feels like it is there because the author said that it was going to be in there. Given the cast of "good" people end the story in the suburbs, it certainly was lead up to that conclusion.
Ran across this by random chance. If you suffer from the same odds of fate: don't. There are better bad books. There are good books. This one is not worth your time.
elempr's review against another edition
4.0
Such a great book! I’m glad I forgot to check goodreads, so I wasn’t scared off by the undeservedly low rating. Very lyrical, lovely prose with some magical realism sprinkled throughout.
This isn’t your typical historical fiction novel about holocaust survivors. It’s more like a beautifully written snapshot into a brief moment in time. Spivack captures a mood that’s very hard to explain. She had me longing for Europe and half in love with classical music. Great book.
This isn’t your typical historical fiction novel about holocaust survivors. It’s more like a beautifully written snapshot into a brief moment in time. Spivack captures a mood that’s very hard to explain. She had me longing for Europe and half in love with classical music. Great book.
cmsnyder's review against another edition
2.0
So weird. Creepy weird. But I read the whole thing, so engaging?
gilmoreguide's review against another edition
1.0
Much has been made of the "unspeakable things" in this novel and yes, there is a doctor who abuses not only children but their mothers and all remain silent. Beyond that very clear story line, the rest of Unspeakable Things is simply too muddled to hold my attention. Musicians who believe their instruments to be alive and hold them more dear than they do their wives? A wife driven insane because? Spivack takes obliqueness to new levels. I don't need graphic depictions of horror, not at all, but I need to understand what an author is trying to say through their words and this is far too difficult in Unspeakable Things. Instead, things move at a sludgey pace so that by 3/4 I had lost interest in whatever was being conveyed.
ellehamp's review
Such odd exaggerations. I think it was maybe trying to be artistic or something else, but whatever it was I could't quite figure it out, nor did I like it very much.
bkish's review against another edition
5.0
Excellent excellent writer with a tremendous gift for describing people and events. It is written during Nazi horrors about people who left Vienna and about world of music. She can develop the most bizarre characters like where do they come from like the Rat or Anna and Felix and the Tolstoi Quartet. Extraordinary experience of reading!
lostinagoodread's review against another edition
2.0
This review and others can be found on Cozy Up With A Good Read
This book had a lot of potential for me, but in the end I really had a hard time enjoying the story. This was a truly difficult book to connect with and I felt that the story switched around characters that I could never get the feel for anyone. I felt lost as to what was happening a lot of the time in this story because it jumped around so much, from past to present and from character to character... I'm the type who likes a little more fluidity to my stories.
I will say I was interested in the idea of this family and all the other characters, trying to start a new life after many hardships and learning about the trials of actually getting out of Russia and how it has affected their families now. There isn't really too much I am able to say about this book, everything felt all over the place and there were quite a few disturbing sections that really made me reconsider finishing... in the end I am happy I did force myself to continue because there are some redeeming parts, as Maria (who I felt was older than 8 in the way she is written) gets to know her aunt, this mysterious creature who throws everyone for a loop when she unexpectedly arrives.
I just found it hard to connect everyone's stories together in this book, and to get past the unspeakable things that were happening. I felt like there was a point where things just seemed to go a little over the top for me and I couldn't concentrate on everything happening. Kathleen Spivack definitely has a special story here that I think many will enjoy, her writing transports you into the characters' world, but for me it just didn't work.
This book had a lot of potential for me, but in the end I really had a hard time enjoying the story. This was a truly difficult book to connect with and I felt that the story switched around characters that I could never get the feel for anyone. I felt lost as to what was happening a lot of the time in this story because it jumped around so much, from past to present and from character to character... I'm the type who likes a little more fluidity to my stories.
I will say I was interested in the idea of this family and all the other characters, trying to start a new life after many hardships and learning about the trials of actually getting out of Russia and how it has affected their families now. There isn't really too much I am able to say about this book, everything felt all over the place and there were quite a few disturbing sections that really made me reconsider finishing... in the end I am happy I did force myself to continue because there are some redeeming parts, as Maria (who I felt was older than 8 in the way she is written) gets to know her aunt, this mysterious creature who throws everyone for a loop when she unexpectedly arrives.
I just found it hard to connect everyone's stories together in this book, and to get past the unspeakable things that were happening. I felt like there was a point where things just seemed to go a little over the top for me and I couldn't concentrate on everything happening. Kathleen Spivack definitely has a special story here that I think many will enjoy, her writing transports you into the characters' world, but for me it just didn't work.
jaclynday's review against another edition
3.0
After finishing this, I felt the same sense of unease that I did when I turned the last page of Eileen by Ottesa Moshfegh last year. Unspeakable Things is billed as “wild, erotic.” Neither word seems to exactly fit this macabre and utterly unnerving book about European refugees fleeing the Nazi regime. There is a lot of literary imagination here—the disturbing secret nature of each of the characters serving as a foil for some bigger thing, some larger atrocity. As the story progresses, it becomes more surreal, more…weird. Spivack gives each character a backstory and a cross to bear—some known to the reader, some not—and then injects the entire plot with a connective thread, tying each of them together in some way. Once I thought of the book as fairy tale-like—a dark Grimm brothers kind, with PTSD—it made sense. It’s not a book easily recommended to others, and it’s incredibly dark and exhausting to read. But it stretched me: my imagination, my emotions.