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A review by roam_
Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins
3.0
My comment when I dnf'd the book in 2019: My inability to read this is probably more about me than the book - it is too loud, too broad-stroked, too many weathered characters ... it's just so loud that I can't hear anything.
And it is still accurate now that I have listened to it and rated it a 3 + star read . The book reminded me of Ottesa Moshfegh's Eileen or My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Clever, lyrical tales about lonely young women who struggle to make themselves vulnerable to others but are too much in their heads to do much other than share a moment with female friends or sisters.
In reading the book I was most interested to see how she depicts the American West - and, oh my, Cormac McCarthy's bleak stylized influence can be seen from the first paragraph on.
Yet, just like Moshfegh's work, I find the blurred lines between a bleak and lonely setting and a character's tenuous mental state to be overdone. I have a sense of McCarthy's Texas enduring beyond our hero riding the bloody meridian but I don't see Virginia City or Reno or the rural area between as separate from the narrator. Too much blending of inner and outer despair to distinguish character from setting.
And it is still accurate now that I have listened to it and rated it a 3 + star read . The book reminded me of Ottesa Moshfegh's Eileen or My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Clever, lyrical tales about lonely young women who struggle to make themselves vulnerable to others but are too much in their heads to do much other than share a moment with female friends or sisters.
In reading the book I was most interested to see how she depicts the American West - and, oh my, Cormac McCarthy's bleak stylized influence can be seen from the first paragraph on.
Yet, just like Moshfegh's work, I find the blurred lines between a bleak and lonely setting and a character's tenuous mental state to be overdone. I have a sense of McCarthy's Texas enduring beyond our hero riding the bloody meridian but I don't see Virginia City or Reno or the rural area between as separate from the narrator. Too much blending of inner and outer despair to distinguish character from setting.