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kattyenn's review against another edition
dark
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
torrilynnn's review against another edition
very very slow. maybe i’ll come back to it one day …
bookish_calirican's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
In all honesty, I didn’t understand what was happening or why for the majority of this book.
Maybe I’m just dumb, but at the end I had no idea what the takeaway was supposed to be, if there was one. Not my favorite of Whitehead’s work.
Maybe I’m just dumb, but at the end I had no idea what the takeaway was supposed to be, if there was one. Not my favorite of Whitehead’s work.
cecile87's review against another edition
4.0
A book I read quite a while back. I appreciated the different world it took me to and the literary writing. I did find it a bit dry, but was fascinated by the intuitive versus sensing dichotomy of elevator inspection. Really. I use Myers-Briggs Type theory in my work and this was an interesting application. Didn't find the people in the story compelling, but if I have to read about race and prejudice--which I'm weary of reading about as I face it in my personal life too often--this was as interesting an riff on it as I could expect.
slynn's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
dnandrews797's review against another edition
4.0
“They were all slaves to what they could see but there was a truth behind that they couldn’t see for the life of them. They looked at the skin of things”
To say this is simply a detective story about elevators is to miss the genius and point of this book entirely, Whitehead writes a masterful and engaging extended metaphor within The Intuitionist and shows what black science fiction can be.
The story itself spotlights Lisa Mae, the only black female elevator inspector, who has an elevator she passed inspection on plummet and crash. As she tries to solve the mystery, it quickly becomes apparent it’s less of how the elevator to fell than the ways black people have to navigate society to get around the subtle micro aggressions and outright slurs of white people. The two schools of thought regarding elevator inspection in the book are The Empiricists (white people working solely on how things appear to be for them) and The Intuitionist (the ideas and things that are unseen, lying below the surface). This itself gives a great basis already for the book before he throws in the rest of his twists and turns to keep things interesting.
I absolutely adored this book and would recommend it to anyone.
To say this is simply a detective story about elevators is to miss the genius and point of this book entirely, Whitehead writes a masterful and engaging extended metaphor within The Intuitionist and shows what black science fiction can be.
The story itself spotlights Lisa Mae, the only black female elevator inspector, who has an elevator she passed inspection on plummet and crash. As she tries to solve the mystery, it quickly becomes apparent it’s less of how the elevator to fell than the ways black people have to navigate society to get around the subtle micro aggressions and outright slurs of white people. The two schools of thought regarding elevator inspection in the book are The Empiricists (white people working solely on how things appear to be for them) and The Intuitionist (the ideas and things that are unseen, lying below the surface). This itself gives a great basis already for the book before he throws in the rest of his twists and turns to keep things interesting.
I absolutely adored this book and would recommend it to anyone.
knittingchaos's review against another edition
3.0
I liked the story itself but it was too wordy which was distracting
kindasweetish's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
It took me about half of the book to understand the allegory and what intuition had to with elevators but it was worth the read.
midnightmarauder's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
bhnmt61's review against another edition
5.0
I read this book as a satire, but I just re-read the publisher's blurb and satire is never mentioned, so maybe I'm wrong. But I thought this was brilliant satire. Like reading Gulliver's Travels: there's a definite story, a plot, but there are so many layers to what's happening that you're never quite sure you're getting it all. Whitehead takes on race, class, urban vs rural life, corporate and government corruption and greed-- but he also takes on academia and theory and the so-called "forward march" of civilization and the progress of science from the Newtonian to the quantum. (Fulton's Fundamentals of Funicular Theory, in two volumes, how perfect is that?) It's brilliant. I'm sure I didn't get it all. I love that in a book.
I think you could just read this for the story of Lila Mae, the first black female elevator inspector in a city that is never named but seems to be NYC. When an elevator she inspects fails less than a week after she inspects it, her perfect record is called into question and she goes rogue to find out what really happened. It's not what you expect.
That's what happens on the surface. But if you dig a little deeper than the plot, there's a goldmine. Loved it.
Trigger alert: there is a torture scene, which I hate, but it is one incident fairly early on and it was easy to skim over. Do writers get some kind of macabre enjoyment out of writing those scenes? I don't know, but they seem to be written with particular relish. I do not get that.
I think you could just read this for the story of Lila Mae, the first black female elevator inspector in a city that is never named but seems to be NYC. When an elevator she inspects fails less than a week after she inspects it, her perfect record is called into question and she goes rogue to find out what really happened. It's not what you expect.
That's what happens on the surface. But if you dig a little deeper than the plot, there's a goldmine. Loved it.
Trigger alert: there is a torture scene, which I hate, but it is one incident fairly early on and it was easy to skim over. Do writers get some kind of macabre enjoyment out of writing those scenes? I don't know, but they seem to be written with particular relish. I do not get that.