The Lonely
3.0
2
5
1
288
9.99
In Stock
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780738741338 |
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| Publisher: | North Star Editions |
| Publication date: | 09/08/2014 |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d) |
| Age Range: | 12 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
The Lonely
3 out of 5
based on
0 ratings.
2 reviews.
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Too Esoteric For Mainstream Audience
I would like to thank NetGalley & Flux for granting me a copy of this e-ARC to read in exchange for an honest review. Though I received this e-book for free that in no way impacts my review.
Goodreads Blurb:
"A darkly humorous and imaginative story
After she discovers The Terrible Thing, Easter Deetz goes looking for her sister, Julia, but ends up pinned under a giant boulder with her legs crushed into tomato paste. Bored, disappointed, and thoroughly dismembered, Easter slowly bleeds to death in The Woods with only sinister squirrels to keep her company. As The Something Coming draws closer, memories of Easter's family surface like hallucinations: a mumbling father who lives alone in the basement; a terrifying grandmother who sits in her enclosed porch all day; an overly loving mother who plays dead in the bathtub on Sunday nights.
As the story of her life unspools, Easter realizes she's being stalked, making it very difficult for her to bleed to death in peace. Will The Something Coming save her? Or will it do her in entirely?"
This is certainly a very creative story, unfortunately it simply didn't work for me. The way Easter would capitalize the important figures and events in her life frustrated me more than it enchanted me. But I give the author props for taking the gamble and using such a device.
For me this read more like an early draft of a creative writing story assigned with very specific requirements to be included. Sadly they felt forced to me, which left me feeling totally detached from Easter and all the other characters. And without that connection to Easter there was nothing holding me to the book. In fact it took me three tries to complete this book, and almost the entire thing felt like an onerous chore.
I am glad I slogged my way through the entire book, as the final page or two, as a whole, made the most sense to me. Had the rest of the book been closer to that writing it might have been easier for me to read, although there were still some literary devices I'd have eliminated, even in those final pages.
However, based upon the skill of this author I believe that she has solid potential. For me she needs to let go of her literary devices and spend more time developing the characters, then placing them in the story. While I understand why the reveal came at the end if the book, it was, with one exception, so transparent that I feel the story would most definitely benefit from a much earlier reveal, allowing more time for character development. It isn't so much that the concept of the story is poor, but that the delivery felt constrained and stilted to me. But as I said earlier, I do feel that with time and more experience this author has potential to be much more powerful and appeal to the masses in a far stronger way. In my opinion this book is far too esoteric for main stream appeal, and shouldn't be marketed as an imaginative novel that's targeting a broad audience. I feel that this book will be popular with a narrow audience, of which I am sadly not a member.
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Let me start out by saying The Lonely isn’t for everyone. Right from the start, it’s obvious some people will love it, and others will hate it. It’s either love or hate, and I’m definitely in the “love” category. Dark humor is the key element of this book. It is dark – I mean, it starts out with the main character Easter ending up pinned under a giant boulder with her legs crushed. She thinks she might die, but heck, bleeding to death is cool, in some way. Sh’s more bored than anything else. While she’s lying under the boulder, Easter starts reliving memories. They’re told like some kind of feverish dream or hallucination.
The truth is, even after reading the book, I’m not sure if I grasped all the pieces of this story. At its core, it’s a dark story – about a disturbed girl and her family. Her loving mother, who plays dead in the bathtub every Sunday night. Her Dad, who locks himself up in the basement. It’s impossible to figure out what is real and what isn’t. Main character Easter is the most unrelieable narrator I’ve ever come across – and I loved reading things from her POV.
The book is specked with dark humor, and sometimes I even laughed out loud, and felt ashamed right after, because I was laughing at the most terrible things.
The writing is superb. It has a dream-like quality, almost as if the writing itself is just another of Easter’s hallucinations.
If you want something different and aren’t afraid to read a book that will leave you wondering what the heck just happened, The Lonely is definitely for you. I loved it. It’s impossible to review it and tell you just how good it is without you checking it out for yourself, so I’ll just end by saying that when Ainslie Hogarth writes another novel, I’m buying it right away. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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