Julianne Pachico

[b:The Lucky Ones|32708020|The Lucky Ones|Julianne Pachico|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1476910899s/32708020.jpg|51233666] is a collection of linked short stories about the fates of a group of wealthy Colombian schoolkids and their parents, servants and teachers affected by the country's war between 1993 and 2013. Each story's narrator is different and sometimes different points of view are portrayed, one chapter as wild as a bunny rabbit hooked on cocaine, another of a coke-sniffing hipster in the US and yet another of a birthday party for children on the Pablo Escobar-like estate with caged tigers of one of the parents; most are third person, but some are second or first person. Each story manages to be compelling and cover the horrors of war, disappearances, drug addiction and injury over the range of time periods and places near Cali where the author grew up.
The writing is exceptional and the book is compelling and well written. I couldn't put it down even in the face of Netflix latest streaming offer.
… (mehr)

I wasn't enjoying this book per se, but it was going along inoffensively enough for me to keep reading when something very strange happened. There was a scene, told from the perspective of rabbits, where an older rabbit just ejaculates everywhere. Literally just jizzes in the middle of the scene. I was pretty much over the book at that point. It was off-putting to say the very least.

As for the rest of the book (which bills itself as a novel, but is written in the now inescapable style of interwoven short stories), it was mostly unremarkable. The first two stories were the best written, but the rest range from boring to "why??".… (mehr)