I have not reviewed a book like this for a long time. By that I mean commenting it and analysing it like I would books when I was at University. For that I could give this book 5 / 5 stars, because I have truly missed doing that. It is not perfect and I would suggest it is not particularly written well, which could gain it only 1 / 5 stars. It was intriguing and often captivating, but then again it alienated me and occasionally I felt it beating me off for not truly understanding, making me feel uneducated and possibly a bit stupid. It was hard to get in to, but it was also hard to put down at times. I felt a resonance within me for the story it was telling, but I felt a dull echo alongside for the calamity it actually was.

I still do not know how many stars to give it. I have never come across a book I cannot assigned a rating to. Occasionally there will be a book that should be a 2, but I might give it a 3 for the cover or a certain way that book made me feel, or for making me laugh more than it really should have. I rarely give 5 stars because I feel people really over-sell and over-rate books and I do not believe they deserve a 5-star rating. Most of my 5-star ratings on GoodReads should actually be a 4.5 or 4.7. There are only two or three books I can honestly say should have 5.0-stars.

I cannot give it 1-star because it spoke to me on a deep level in a way no other 1-star book has. I cannot give it 5-stars because it was seriously flawed and, though there are no perfect books out there (that I have read yet) all of the books I have given 5-stars were given out of pure joy and adoration. I do not adore this book and I would not describe my feeling as I came out of it as joy.

I will probably re-read this book. I may have to, just to understand it. It has taught me a lot, mostly about music which is not an uninteresting topic to me. The storyline has almost become a by-product, but the world, the meanings and the writing is at the forefront. It is a contemporary classic, but at the same time it is not.


(Full breakdown review available on blog.) ( )