Search Results
7/5/2025, 8:27:23 AM
>>3796799
>It’s ass and retarded but not just because it’s about sad gay man who gets molested. For the first 100 pages the book constructs a quartet of somewhat annoying but at least vividly described NYC types. The perspective bounces between them and we get at least a mediocre back and forth world-building for a while, until suddenly the book dives deep into one characters impossibly traumatic upbringing. The characterization of both his childhood and present life is so wildly exaggerated in every respect that it loses all force after a few hundred pages of emotional manipulation. Jude, the protagonist, is sequentially molested, in a bizarrely socially un-investigated way by the clergy, orphanage peers, somehow every truck driver across the continental US, and last but not least an actually supervillainous evil doctor. Yet, AT THE SAME TIME, he is somehow a genius lawyer, beloved by everyone, a savant pianist, double majored in pure math and is an advanced logician, basically unaffected by his traumas except for his highly repetitive self-harm and inability to confide his past with others. This device is used so monotonously that 2/3rds of the way through the book, it feels natural as a reader to literally feel like he should just kill himself to end this boredom. And while all of this is happening, all of the potentially interesting members of the original quartet fade almost entirely out of relevance, and not in an artistically interesting way that connotes absence, but rather feeling like Yanigahara had an one idea and then pivoted to another 100 pages in. Fuck this book. All its mystery and intrigue is simply contingent on hinting at scenes of impossible grotesque abuse and then falling completely flat once they are described (and not even taken to the truly absurd proportions they could be). How is it that Tropic of Cancer manages to feel more transgressive than a book with child sex slavery?
From some anon's review.
(1/2)
>It’s ass and retarded but not just because it’s about sad gay man who gets molested. For the first 100 pages the book constructs a quartet of somewhat annoying but at least vividly described NYC types. The perspective bounces between them and we get at least a mediocre back and forth world-building for a while, until suddenly the book dives deep into one characters impossibly traumatic upbringing. The characterization of both his childhood and present life is so wildly exaggerated in every respect that it loses all force after a few hundred pages of emotional manipulation. Jude, the protagonist, is sequentially molested, in a bizarrely socially un-investigated way by the clergy, orphanage peers, somehow every truck driver across the continental US, and last but not least an actually supervillainous evil doctor. Yet, AT THE SAME TIME, he is somehow a genius lawyer, beloved by everyone, a savant pianist, double majored in pure math and is an advanced logician, basically unaffected by his traumas except for his highly repetitive self-harm and inability to confide his past with others. This device is used so monotonously that 2/3rds of the way through the book, it feels natural as a reader to literally feel like he should just kill himself to end this boredom. And while all of this is happening, all of the potentially interesting members of the original quartet fade almost entirely out of relevance, and not in an artistically interesting way that connotes absence, but rather feeling like Yanigahara had an one idea and then pivoted to another 100 pages in. Fuck this book. All its mystery and intrigue is simply contingent on hinting at scenes of impossible grotesque abuse and then falling completely flat once they are described (and not even taken to the truly absurd proportions they could be). How is it that Tropic of Cancer manages to feel more transgressive than a book with child sex slavery?
From some anon's review.
(1/2)
Page 1