Max Porter

An odd little novella about a family mourning their wife and mother and a crow that moves in to help them deal with their grief. The Ted Hughes allusions went over my head, though I know he wrote a "crow" book. The title, of course, refers to Emily Dickinson's poem, which begins:

"Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -"

I don't think I totally "got" this book but I enjoyed the listen. Grief is such a hard thing to write about - so complex and personal - but Porter does it well.

4 stars… (mehr)

Lanny "déjà vu all over again"
Review of the Strange Light paperback edition (May 14, 2019) of the original Faber & Faber hardcover (March 7, 2019).

I was probably fated not to love this book after my experience with the eBook edition which I briefly summarized in Warning Review: Avoid Microscopic Kindle Edition. I did give the book another chance though and was able to source a paperback copy from the library. This was mostly readable, even of most of the bizarre curlicue fonts, except for a sequence of pages 89-91 where the gobbledygook nonsense is even printed superimposed on itself.

See photo at https://scontent-ord5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/434412145_26034430556155717_8...
Photo of pages 90-91 of the paperback edition

That just angered me all over again. The feeling is enhanced when you actually try to read some of that stuff and it is basically meaningless with no relationship to the main plot. I suppose it is meant as the OCD ramblings of the mythological spirit named as Dead Papa Toothwort who plays a possible antagonistic role in the proceedings.

The rest of the story did have its charms. A young boy Lanny is taken under the wing of a resident elderly artist Pete Blythe while his mother Josie is busy writing a crime novel and father Robert is off in the big city doing something in the investment banking field. About 1/2 way through Lanny goes missing and the village joins forces in the search. There is definitely an outstanding sequence where mother Josie interacts in a dialogue & a stream of consciousness back and forth with a cantankerous neighbour woman named Mrs. Larton. That was at least worth the price of admission.

However it is points off for a gratuitous butchery of a hedgehog scene and the stupid use of the unreadable font passages. A 3-rating is my compromise.… (mehr)

Warning Review: Avoid Microscopic Kindle edition
Review of the Strange Light Kindle edition (May 14, 2019) of the Faber & Faber hardcover original (March 7, 2019).

Ok, this is an exception as I almost never do DNF reviews, but I only got 10% or so into this Kindle edition with the microscopic curlicue fonts* which were just irritating and made me angry, so I abandoned the book in this format. This is a review about the format medium and not the book content. Perhaps on a tablet or large screen this would not be a problem but I enjoy the Kindle for its portability and I found it totally unreadable on the relatively small screen. I have put in for a library hold for the physical book instead.
If you are curious as to what I am talking about, here are some sample images:
See screengrab at https://scontent-ord5-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/430096908_25959590970306343_5...
See screengrab at https://scontent-ord5-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/431879554_25959451003653673_2...
Images are screengrabs from the Kindle mobile phone app as those were easier to screenshot, and not from the actual Kindle screen. The relative sizes between the regular font and the tiny fonts are the same on the slightly larger Kindle screen.

Footnote
* The texts in curlicue font are actually individual graphic images. Enlarging the font of the main text does nothing for the graphic images, they remain tiny. You would have to tap on each word or phrase individually as a graphic to enlarge it. I was not prepared to spend that amount of time on it.… (mehr)