::m::

Important topic but feels a bit light

Reviewed: 09-03-24

It’s a decent effort from two German journalists. But they seem unsure of who their audience is. Sometimes they pause to explain fairly obvious facts about China, as if they are writing for high school students who hear of the subject matter for the first time. Other times they make only vague references when discussing complex historical contexts.
Like many journalists they also fall for the temptation to write themselves into the story. Seeming quite pleased with themselves when they have managed to secure face to face interviews with important people.
It’s unclear if they did any new research specifically for this book, or whether the book only sums up their past articles and interviews on China.

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Nonsense

Reviewed: 10-12-23

You may arrive at this book, like I did, with a great appreciation for Lewis’ work. Prepare to be more than disappointed. This is a garbage fire of the writers personal biases.

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A very limited narrative

Reviewed: 24-09-23

A great cataclysmic event leaves a middle aged woman stranded alone with no human contact. The story then goes on to describe her relationship with her pets in great details, while she does not seem to think much about what the destructive event may have done to her husband and daughters. Very odd.

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Fake accent alert

Reviewed: 01-10-22

The narrator is perfectly capable, but when he reads the speech of the characters he turns to a cringeworthy attempt at a French accent. Audible, why are you still doing this?

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Only for the die hard Atwood fans

Reviewed: 22-11-21

I’ve read pretty much all of Atwood’s work and I’d place this book firmly in the bottom 5.
It’s not outright bad, just not very engaging.
What the stories seem to have in common are various attempts at describing the passing of time, so if you’ve got a particular interest in that I suppose it’s worth a listen.

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1 person found this helpful

Possibly my favourite Audible book so far

Reviewed: 10-08-21

A perfect combination of narrator and plot. The narrator generally keeps his tone neutral, but adds subtle nuance in exactly the right places.
A treat!

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2 people found this helpful

Fake accents

Reviewed: 28-02-21

I can't really review the story, it may very well be great. But gave up pretty early as the narrator does the fake accent thing.
Basically, when a character in the story speaks in French to another character, the narrator speaks their lines in English, but laying on a cringe-worthy French accent.
Audible, why do you keep doing this?

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OK

Reviewed: 29-07-20

Well written and probably useful as a primer for undergraduate courses. The writer has a talent for weaving examples, references and personal anecdotes into the text so that these feel relevant rather than becoming detours from the subject at hand.
At the same time the book fails to live up to the title’s promise of “rethinking”. The author stays close to his sources, and it is hard to see that he introduces any novel ideas of his own. At most he might add a commentary as to whether he agrees or disagrees with various ideas around identity, ideas that have already been put into existence by others.
It should also be noted that this book mostly deals with the English speaking world. It would be interesting to learn about identity from, say, China or India, but that seems to be outside of the scope of this book.

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Cringeworthy accents

Reviewed: 11-06-20

What’s up with the narrator’s accents? The Norwegian immigrant has a thick German accent rather than the singsong Scandinavian accent. The rendition of the Chinese immigrant make Apu from the Simpsons seem thoughtful and nuanced. Is Audible planning a movie adaptation using actors with black face?
The novel itself isn’t that great either. The author isn’t great with subtleties of human nature and instead goes for extremes. Two sisters that are the complete opposites, a couple of characters with relentlessly obsessive hobbies, a mother with strong dementia and a soldier with PTSD etc.

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Narrator sounds like comic book guy from the Simpsons

Reviewed: 25-01-20

Interesting book written on a decent premise. But the narrator seems to think the material isn’t engaging enough and that it’s up to him to exaggerate his performance in a order to make up for it.
Will buy the book instead.

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