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The Doloriad - Question 1 - General Thoughts
Curious what people thought of this book in general. It seems like the kind of book that can have a variety of opinions on it. Were you aware of this book before reading it and if so, did it meet expectations? Did you enjoy the reading experience? If not, did it evoke other emotions?
Comments
I hadn't heard of it before so had no expectations. I have to confess I didn't really enjoy it and struggled, not least with the prose style (which I see you pull out as a separate topic later)/ The second half was very much skim-read just to get through it. I guess from the title I had expected something more like a classic epic like the Odysses (eg Margaret Attwood wrote The Penelopiad as a contrasting perspective), but that's not what I seemed to be getting.
I couldn't deal with it, and stopped reading very quickly. Not something I had any interest in, in any way.
I wasn't aware of the book. I did like the prose quite a bit, so that propelled me along. I would consider reading more by the author - I like to think future books would build on her strengths while leaving behind the things that didn't work so well for me.
Did I enjoy the reading experience? That's another question. Certainly the setting was bleak (which I do kind of want in a post apocalyptic novel) and there was a lot of difficult subject matter in the book. That wasn't 'enjoyable' - it was challenging, which I do like from a reading experience. Maybe this book crossed the line, though! Very bleak. It reminded me of the X-Files most impactful episode, which I remember being very impressed by when it aired - Home is Where The Heart Is - which features an FBI raid on a horrible hillbilly family home. It was horrifying and probably racist (or culturist at least). But it had a wow-factor as a TV episode.
This book reminded me of that episode, though without the impact. And it lacked impact because it often dawdled. And the introduction of the TV show and stories the characters told one another had a way of intruding into the story and confusing it, so it wasn't always clear to me what was going on. But it did remain somewhat fascinating to me in it's grossness, and I like the prose (despite the lack of paragraphs, which normally I hate, but here didn't bother me.)
I'm still sort of unsure how I feel about this book overall. I'm not generally one who enjoys disturbing things in books but in this case because the whole thing was this long stretch of failed humanity, I felt a little more detached from it all than I normally would have.
I will say that it made me think. About origin stories and about the value of human life and where it comes from. About narrative structures and why I read books. About the meaninglessness of power. And more. In that sense I guess it was an effective book for me.
I also can't say I enjoyed the reading process, but generally if a book sticks with me after reading it, it's a sign that it did something right, so I am torn. I think there was so much going on with the prose, the allusions, the writing style etc, that I also often felt like I was missing chunks of what the author was hoping to achieve.
Another thought about this book while I was reading it is that it is sort of like getting a glimpse into the inside of the creepy groups in post-apocalyptic tales that the protagonists usually run into. The cannibals, the cultists, the slavers - but this time we get some insight into how one of these groups might have come about.