Welcome to Litsy!

And with that, I‘ve finished all the main brackets of the #ToB21! This was a strange book that went in a direction I didn‘t expect. I almost put it aside about a quarter of the way in, but kept going and couldn‘t put it down for the middle third. I don‘t even know how to summarize it, but the series of events around the steady unraveling of the narrator are unsettling to say the least. Almost a pick, but not quite, though I‘m glad I read it.

#ToB21 is on! While admitting that all play-in books are great, the judge voted for Red Pill, so that book will now enter the #ToB21. @Readerann and @Ruthiella will be thrilled with that outcome😉 but the majority of the #LitsyToB21 voted for The Resisters. So that's the one returning against The Vanishing Half. If you want to change your vote for this match because you now know what book The Vanishing Half is up against, please let me know below!

Our nameless male protagonist heads to Berlin for a fellowship at the Deuter Center. The Center's open office plan & intrusive surveillance quickly puts the narrator at odds with the staff & the other residents. He frequently avoids others while at the Center, preferring to spend his days visiting the grave of Romantic poet Kleist & wandering around. He soon becomes obsessed with a streaming procedural cop show with the telling title Blue Lives👇

This is a case of me really liking a book that feels smarter than I am. A left-leaning academic with imposter syndrome heads to a German writers retreat with instructions from his wife to come back happy. He doesn‘t. Along the way we hear about Kleist‘s suicide, the insidiousness of the Stasi, the East German underground music scene, a fictitious cop show, and the alt right‘s internet presence.

I have less than 70 pages left & I honestly don't know what to make of Kunzru's latest. There are certainly flashes of brilliance, but it also feels frustratingly unfocused at times.

So far this book has so much going on. There are allusions (I think to Wonderland and The Matrix) wrapped in.... something. I need time to process.

Pick for depth but this is not for everyone.

Hari Kunzru writes a philosophical novel that would probably take three PhDs for me to get to the heart of, but I grasped some of what he was trying to do. I know he's been interested in the rise of fascism and it is the narrator's inability to argue his way out of it, the lack of the tools to see good triumph over evil, that will stick with me the most.↘️

OMG I found this book absolutely unsettling and haunting. I couldn't get it out of my mind. Like, I'd put the book down and I'd just feel so uncomfortable for hours. I absolutely must read his backlist, bc this and White Tears both blew me away.

Squee! Just starting. I understand this is the second of three interlinked books he's writing, the first being white tears. That book ripped my brain open so I'm absolutely dying to get into this one.

Listened to this one on #audiobook. A novel in 5 parts that are well delineated. The second part which details the story of a minor character seems unimportant to the central narrative, but it was my favorite part. Lots of angst off the 2016 US presidential election, so timely for me. I liked it but it was slow to start and too esoteric in places.