Book Review: A Long Way from Home

A Long Way From Home by Peter Carey

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

DNF @ 15%
If you’re thinking that 15% isn’t enough to know if a story is good or not, then I agree. It is however long enough to know that the style and delivery of the story is not for you.
Peter Carey has used a style here that is reminiscent of painful required readings in school. With first person viewpoints that mix dialogue, thoughts and descriptions all together you have to really pay attention to get the juicy details out. For me, these days, unless I’m instantly drawn into the story I am not interested in putting in the work. I barely wanted to it to read The Picture of Dorian Gray recently; so you can probably imagine that for a recently written publication I have no tolerance for this snobbery.

I believe it is no longer forgivable to write books (of any kind) that are so far outside the realm of 50% of readers. And this comes from someone who loves The Lord of the Rings and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell which are both very intense and reading feats in their own right, but at least they grabbed my attention quickly. If you are a mainstream author and want to sell books you really have to write for your audience; and unless you want the small marginal audience of PhD's and the occasional snobby reader, then I recommend you not write books like this.
Regardless of if you believe me to be a wuss (lol) for not pushing through more pages or uneducated or whatever other derogatory term you can think of; I’m content to pass this one by and move onto the thousands of other books out there that are infinitely more readable than this one.

Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.

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