Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Canongate Books (2021), Editie: Main, 352 pagina's
User reviews
LibraryThing member sjh4255
Brilliantly put together novel of an author, who meets with a close contact of his father after many years.. mind-blowing detail put into the book, so much I may have to read it again to pick up on some things I may have missed.. Also, the author has a great name... just saying... :P
LibraryThing member mpho3
I almost DNF’d this because I was very close to hating it and had decided to do myself the favor of stopping. But the next day curiosity got the best of me, so I picked Maxwell's Demon up again and forced myself to speed through the remaining 100 or so pages. Forced is a key word, and yes, I
For one, post-modern, meta-fiction, typographical trickery is not my thing. Like many others, I was reminded of House of Leaves, but this book is sprinkled with far less of the typographical word play than that book, for which I am grateful. I'd almost consider Hall’s usage a tolerable amount, except that some of it was so tiny that my middle-aged eyes determined he didn't want me to read those parts, and I didn't.
Second, the physics stuff was interesting to me as were the philosophical musings and the bible apocrypha, but the mysteries contained in the polaroid, Dracula's Castle, Imogen's whereabouts and other things frustrated me because I did not find them interesting enough to cast about lost in Hall's game.
Third, he takes too long to tell the story, dancing around it and dangling bits without enough forward progression. I got much more curious when Stanley arrives in Owthorne in search of Andrew Black, but this is also where things more aggressively start to fall apart.
Last, from that point on, there's an unfair amount of having to suspend your disbelief that ratchets up in the final acts, and in which everything is revealed to be first one thing, then another thing, and then yet another thing until you realize this thing was never going anywhere at all. I like a good twist, but it has to follow some sort of logic otherwise it's just another M. Night Shyamalan, and I'm not a fan of that.
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skimmed. So now that it's done, my final take is I can’t with this book.For one, post-modern, meta-fiction, typographical trickery is not my thing. Like many others, I was reminded of House of Leaves, but this book is sprinkled with far less of the typographical word play than that book, for which I am grateful. I'd almost consider Hall’s usage a tolerable amount, except that some of it was so tiny that my middle-aged eyes determined he didn't want me to read those parts, and I didn't.
Second, the physics stuff was interesting to me as were the philosophical musings and the bible apocrypha, but the mysteries contained in the polaroid, Dracula's Castle, Imogen's whereabouts and other things frustrated me because I did not find them interesting enough to cast about lost in Hall's game.
Third, he takes too long to tell the story, dancing around it and dangling bits without enough forward progression. I got much more curious when Stanley arrives in Owthorne in search of Andrew Black, but this is also where things more aggressively start to fall apart.
Last, from that point on, there's an unfair amount of having to suspend your disbelief that ratchets up in the final acts, and in which everything is revealed to be first one thing, then another thing, and then yet another thing until you realize this thing was never going anywhere at all. I like a good twist, but it has to follow some sort of logic otherwise it's just another M. Night Shyamalan, and I'm not a fan of that.
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Language
Original language
English
Physical description
337 p.; 8.66 inches
ISBN
1847672469 / 9781847672469