Book 98 - #rattled

Title: Beasts of No Nation

Author: Uzodinma Iweala

Genre: war fiction

That...was a tough read.

For a few reasons.

One, the narrative style. It's written very strangely. I'm no good at knowing tenses in this language of mine, but it's full of "-ing"ing. Like: here I am writing about the things I am feeling and thinking after I am reading book I am finding online. That sort of thing, including onomatopoeic spelling and other devices for communicating broken-ish English - I won't deny that it's an effective tool to close the distance between the reader and the speaker, but it does also push the reader away at first as you try to settle in.

This is also a hard read because the content. The story is told by Agu, a child soldier in war-torn, un-named Africa. He does terrible things, sees terrible things, and is victim to terrible, terrible things. The book is short but tense, like an itsy-bitsy, blood-red star heart.

And that's all I'll say about that.

Rating: 🍓🍓🍓 /5