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the paris apartment -- 49% review
Friday, April 14th, 2023 03:00
well then. this 13 hour novel is definitely a strange one for sure. it reminds me a lot of everything i never told you by celeste ng (god, what a beautiful novel) but without a lot of the emotional gut punches that that book is all about. for all that this book is written in a roving first person, delving first into one character's thoughts and then another, it's written to be strangely on-the-nose. "i felt an absurd prick of jealousy" is certainly a thing someone can say in retrospect, but it feels strange to hear a narrator say it in response to an action that has just occurred. a weird combination of first person, past tense, and... what to call it? an excess of self-awareness? every character in the book is so quick to acknowledge their flaws in a way that feels surreal and out of place.
even so, the novel does a really fantastic job of making you feel ill-at-ease. i'm waiting to see the big TWIST, where all the pieces fall into place. there was a pretty hefty one just a few chapters ago, but there's still a lot missing when it comes to the Mystery.
( open me for a spoilery synopsis of the story so far )
but that's just it, with this novel. you think you know just enough to point the finger at the perpetrator, but you don't have quite enough evidence. you keep switching your target, as jess' unease with her surroundings and gut instinct to distrust everyone in her vicinity, brings in more and more inconclusive information. and jess doesn't know why she feels uneasy with everyone. but i think i do. i have to know for sure, though. i want to be able to figure it out with clarity-- not just everyone involved, but how it happened, what happened after, where ben ended up. because, despite learning plenty about the other residents of the apartment and their various impressions of ben over the months he spends living among them, we don't get the crucial information we need to make the pronouncement.
it's a strange way to build a relationship between the reader and jess. at many points, we know more than she does because she's hopping in at the conclusion of ben's story, when we were privy to the climax. and yet, on the points that she's pursuing, neither she nor we gain headway. and so we are made allies in our ignorance. jess is not a likeable character-- she snoops around more than she ought to and excuses it from past experience; she's restless and on edge and medicates her anxieties and tells herself she knows how stupid it is to get into danger right as she charges on in; and she chooses to trust people that it feels incredibly risky to trust at all. but even if i don't agree with her methods, she's certainly doing a great deal more than i am at learning secrets, even if she doesn't get flashbacks to her brother's perspective to fill in the gaps like i do. not the sort of thing i think i would do to write a mystery, but definitely effective.
though, on saying all of that, i realize that jess is remarkably holmes-esque in her knack for poking around where she's definitely not wanted. she just doesn't have a watson to smooth out her abrasiveness. i wonder how much that's intentional, the resemblance.
tl;dr i'm still on the fence about this book, but if the ending pulls through, it'll be a solid novel. here's hoping. for now, i'll go with 5 bears out of 9.
even so, the novel does a really fantastic job of making you feel ill-at-ease. i'm waiting to see the big TWIST, where all the pieces fall into place. there was a pretty hefty one just a few chapters ago, but there's still a lot missing when it comes to the Mystery.
( open me for a spoilery synopsis of the story so far )
but that's just it, with this novel. you think you know just enough to point the finger at the perpetrator, but you don't have quite enough evidence. you keep switching your target, as jess' unease with her surroundings and gut instinct to distrust everyone in her vicinity, brings in more and more inconclusive information. and jess doesn't know why she feels uneasy with everyone. but i think i do. i have to know for sure, though. i want to be able to figure it out with clarity-- not just everyone involved, but how it happened, what happened after, where ben ended up. because, despite learning plenty about the other residents of the apartment and their various impressions of ben over the months he spends living among them, we don't get the crucial information we need to make the pronouncement.
it's a strange way to build a relationship between the reader and jess. at many points, we know more than she does because she's hopping in at the conclusion of ben's story, when we were privy to the climax. and yet, on the points that she's pursuing, neither she nor we gain headway. and so we are made allies in our ignorance. jess is not a likeable character-- she snoops around more than she ought to and excuses it from past experience; she's restless and on edge and medicates her anxieties and tells herself she knows how stupid it is to get into danger right as she charges on in; and she chooses to trust people that it feels incredibly risky to trust at all. but even if i don't agree with her methods, she's certainly doing a great deal more than i am at learning secrets, even if she doesn't get flashbacks to her brother's perspective to fill in the gaps like i do. not the sort of thing i think i would do to write a mystery, but definitely effective.
though, on saying all of that, i realize that jess is remarkably holmes-esque in her knack for poking around where she's definitely not wanted. she just doesn't have a watson to smooth out her abrasiveness. i wonder how much that's intentional, the resemblance.
tl;dr i'm still on the fence about this book, but if the ending pulls through, it'll be a solid novel. here's hoping. for now, i'll go with 5 bears out of 9.
