Hannah Tennant-MooreBesprekingen

I honestly had a really hard time reading this. The narration is in a sort of stream-of-consciousness style and it keeps jumping around between the present and various points in the past. On top of that, the narrator/main character is not at all likable, but the author also doesn't really provide any compelling reason for why we should read her story. I hoped that something would come through in the end that caused it all to make sense. But there was nothing. I can't really recommend this one.

I hated the first quarter of this book. Elsie is a difficult character to read about; she is overprivileged, entitled, shallow, whiny, and continually makes bad life choices. I don't generally have a problem with unlikable protagonists, but her self-absorption could be hard to take. But I do think she developed some layers as the book went on, and she was self-aware enough to realize a lot of her own faults. I probably wouldn't have put this on the First Novel longlist, but I will be looking out for Tennant-Moore's next novel.

I started reading this a few days ago. It's been sitting on my shelf for a while and it was a LibraryThing giveaway that I should have read and reviewed long ago. I'm on a mission to clear books off my TBR shelf (very slowly) and picked this up but 30 pages in and I'm giving up. There's nothing wrong with the writing - it's definitely a very confident, young voice. Maybe it's just not for me. But after getting through some 30 pages, I realized that I really didn't care for the narrator or her story and that I've got plenty more books to spend my reading time on.

I had some major issues with the book; tried to explain it in this review.

This was a very enjoyable read. I found the main character both intriguing and real; I felt her pain and understood her life's struggle as she searched for her answers. The writing is strong and the settings, characters, and storyline was excellent. I would recommend this to any readers who have searched to find their own answers in life.

I'm sure a lot of people will find the narrator intolerable, but I think there was a healthy dose of acknowledgement for that. In other words, I think the book kind of commented on itself. The execution wasn't perfect, but I sort of like the attempt it made to put imperfection in a glaring light.

I received this book for free through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers.

I can see why many people abandoned this book. The beginning is quite aimless and boring. For me, it wasn't until Elsie went to Sri Lanka for the second time that it got interesting.

I don't quite know what to make of this book. I kind of see what it was trying to achieve but it lacked a clear direction.

Overall, this wasn't completely horrible but it still wasn't a worthwhile read.

Do you ever run across something that makes you feel old? Hannah Tennant-Moore's novel Wreck and Order was one of those things. I was intrigued by the premise before reading it but I spent much of the novel wanting to shake some sense and motivation into the self-destructive, annoying, and thoroughly unlikable main character. Obviously this does not bode well for my eventual overall impression.

Elsie is a thirty-something young woman who drops out of college and thereafter coasts on the money her father gives her. She is intermittently translating an obscure French novel, which is somehow supposed to reinforce her own (misguided) idea that she is intelligent and special. But her navel gazing narration of an unmoored life lived as a series of destructive sexual encounters or, when not actively engaged in those encounters, fantasizing about them, makes the reader question any implication of intelligence previously granted. Elsie connects with a lying, cheating, boozy boyfriend who becomes an obsession in her life, the man she returns to again and again. At one point when she has broken free of Jared, she is too bored by her colorless (a synonym for violence-free to Elsie) sex life with the normal man she's met so she sabotages their life together. At another point she travels to Sri Lanka and stays with Suriya, a young woman she intends to help achieve her dream of teaching English. And yet even in this trip, which just highlights over and over again her self-centered preoccupation, ennui, and unpleasantness, Elsie can't maintain an interest in this poor girl and her family, ending up treating Suriya as an embarrassing and disposable project she can just abandon rather than as a human being she should care about.

Perhaps Elsie's character as written would be forgivable if the book had been more interesting all around. Instead, she is a caricature of a vapid, spoiled millennial and who wants to read about that? Self-destructive characters can be worth reading about if they serve a greater purpose. Elsie does not. Character and plot are both aimless. The erstwhile philosophical pieces were tiresome, overblown, and filled with circular ramblings that didn't actually mean anything if you took the time to parse them out. I think the book is meant to come off as profound but sadly, it only came off as profoundly boring. Then again, maybe it will appeal to readers a generation younger than me who can more readily connect with the Elsies of the world. But if this is their reality, I have to say I pity them.

Hannah Tennant-Moore is clearly a huge talent, and WRECK AND ORDER occasionally stuns with its language and insight. It frequently tries too hard, though, and something about it just reads clichéd and trite.

At the end of Part Two of Hannah Tennant-Moore’s Wreck and Order Elsie says, “I’m the type of human who will die out.” Given the type of lifestyle she leads, particularly with her “friend,” Jared, one would think she’s probably right, but when you follow her through Sri Lanka and witness her interactions with that country’s inhabitants, particularly with her friend, Suriya, you certainly hope she’s wrong. I was perhaps the wrong person to read this book. While turning its pages, it reminded me of a millenial’s version of “Eat, Pray, Love.” Twenty-something feels lost and goes on a soul-searching mission to Paris and Sri Lanka. Unfortunately, she is never quite able to leave her past behind and that past is pretty sordid. I admired Elsie’s guts, I thought she had heart and I ached at her capacity for self-destruction. It just wasn’t enough for me to love the book.

Love this girl. Elsie and I are a bit similar, both peripatetic and unmoored. I appreciate the insights and enjoyed her story.

I was given an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

An unexamined life is not worth living. But what happens when the examined life turns out to be not so great?

Wreck and Order, the debut novel by Hannah Tennant-Moore, is not an easy book to review because it is not an easy book to read. The basic story is easy enough. Elise is an only child of wealth who is on a life-long journey to find, understand, and improve herself. While this may sound similar to many recent novels and movies, in this case the result is very different. That is because despite all the new locations and lovers she travels through in the end she is left with herself.

Wreck and Order is a great example of how your greatest strengths can also be your worst weakness. What makes this book so compelling is its honest depiction of Elise and her struggles to find answers. What makes this book so hard to read is its honest depiction of Elise and her struggles to find answers. Many new books are hyped with terms like honest, fierce, raw, fearless, and unnerving. In Tennant-Moore's obviously capable hands these are understatements. I found that I could not read this book for long without putting it down because it was so stark and intense. I also found that I could not stop myself from picking it back up because it was so intense and stirring.

This is not a book to read lightly. But it definitely is a book to read if you want to be challenged.½

I'm being generous with 2 stars for this book - I struggled to finish it. The story of Elsie and her aimless life was not engaging at all. She was not a likable character and her only redeeming quality was her genuine friendship with and love for Suriya. I didn't understand this character's motivations - her feelings about sex, her relationship with Jared, the way she feels about herself. She comes across as spoiled and self-absorbed - a stereotype of a millennial young woman. The writer clearly has talent but the story itself is just not relatable or enjoyable. I received an ARC of this book from LibraryThing.

Unlike many readers of Wreck and Order I found the narrative of the protagonist, Elsie, which is presented in a first-person stream-of-consciousness style, immediately engaging. From the first page I was absorbed fully in her "story." I understand other readers' frustration with this character's choices and actions (or lack thereof). Hannah Tennant-Moore does not offer readers a compelling plot in this work; however, the main character's insights are often resonant, funny, interesting. The quality and depth of character development, rather than the story told, distinguish this book as a worthwhile read, IMHO. Please be advised I received a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Thanks for reading my thoughts; I hope they are helpful.

Wreck and Order by Hannah Tennant-Moore follows Elsie, a young lady who is a mess. Struggling with an inherent emptiness and a desire to be left mostly alone, Elsie leaves her chaotic relationships behind and uses money her father throws at her to skip college and go traveling.

Partly influenced by growing up with her mother's New Age search for Enlightenment, Elsie goes to Sri Lanka to meditate, to change her life. She meets young Suriya who challenges her a bit, and whose presence in the novel allow readers to further get to know Elsie for who she really is.

Rather than being another Eat Pray Love, Wreck and Order is full of refreshing human honesty. During meditation Elsie fights the urge to scratch itches and ignore bugs. She is self aware, realizes she isn't going to have some grand Ah-Ha moment and be changed forever.

Elsie is aware of her privilege, and she is aware that her dissatisfaction and perception of life is more debilitating than it should be. She knows her relationships are unhealthy, is aware of her destructive behavioral patterns ("'He made me this way.' This wasn't untrue. But it was also true that I'd chosen him because he did this to me. He was my excuse." "I liked when the word *abusive* came up. It was neat and respected and freed me of responsibility.")
Still, I found sympathy for Elsie due to how relatable she is, as she feels "still entirely at a loss as to how to be a human being."

But Elsie does understand some things about being human. Wreck and Order is full of many quotable lines, and Elsie gaining understanding of people around her. When wondering about why people worship, she answers herself "because we want to live well and we don't know how." This highlights her intelligence and insight, and makes her Privileged White Girl Traveling a Poor Country situation more palatable and human.

Another thing about Elsie is that she likes sex. This is prevalent throughout the novel, and because this is an honest book about a lost woman, the sex scenes are not beautiful. Sex is not a beautiful thing to Elsie. Sex is sex. (In fact she often finds herself feeling emptier still after her encounters.) The descriptions in these scenes are therefore just that, and some readers may find the language crass. However, they paint a picture of Elsie's psyche, the way she interprets the world. The last thing she is is a romantic.

This fact may make her less endearing of a main character to many readers, but I found I could appreciate the novel for what it is: the raw, gritty journey of a lost young woman.

*I received Wreck and Order in exchange for an honest review. This review also appears of Goodreads and Amazon

I hated the first quarter of this book. Elsie is a difficult character to read about; she is overprivileged, entitled, shallow, whiny, and continually makes bad life choices. I don't generally have a problem with unlikable protagonists, but her self-absorption could be hard to take. But I do think she developed some layers as the book went on, and she was self-aware enough to realize a lot of her own faults. I probably wouldn't have put this on the First Novel longlist, but I will be looking out for Tennant-Moore's next novel.

It was difficult to even give this novel a rating of one star. I must say that I couldn't finish it. It seemed to be the aimless rambling of a completely unlikable character. I don't have to like the main character of
every book that I read but found "Elsie" so unlikable that I really didn't care whether she was successful in improving her life. She bounced from relationship to relationship and from bed to bed, being either a slow learner or a masochist.

I received this for free from Early Reviewers. I couldn't not get into this at all. I made it to page 22 which was a stretch for me. It's fiction but written in the first person. So I kept thinking this was a memoir when it's fake.

For the rest of the review, visit my blog at: http://angelofmine1974.livejournal.com/109765.html

This is a decent novel with well drawn characters. However, I found the story to be unsatisfying. Self Destructive characters can be fascinating as well as enjoyably frustrating but if they don't in some way change what really is the point of their story except to wallow in the downward spiral? Not something I enjoy. 3 stars for the writing but 2 stars off for the unsatisfying story arc.

I really enjoyed a lot of this story, but I certainly wasn't expecting it to be quite so graphically sexual. It didn't bother me, it just seemed to be the primary theme of the story, rather than just one element of the main character's life. I wanted the stronger themes of searching for meaning, self-motivation, sense of place, etc., to be more fleshed out, but in the end Elsie just seemed to continue going around in circles. There was no real evidence at the end that she was changing course, and the potential to be headed back into the beginning of her self-destructive cycle is high.

I think the parallels to the book she is translating are more important than I initially realized - primarily that at the end, it turns out to just be a boring, pretentious book that no one, not even Elsie, cares about. The feeling at the end of the book is that her entire life is the same. I wish there had been a bit more direction, a bit more progress, but I think I see the point she was trying to make. Maybe this is just too real-life (other than the sex stuff) to make a particularly enticing story.

This book was okay. I enjoyed the characters not because I necessarily liked their personalities, but because they were well made. However, I would have liked to see them in a story that was actually interesting. Way too sexual for my taste.

I love to read about damaged people, and anyone so unlike myself that I feel like I'm privy to things I shouldn't even be told- or certainly wouldn't admit if it were me. I had a love/hate relationship with this book and though it sounds cliche, it's all I've got.(I will return and try to pick a side after I let it sit for awhile)½

I don't know that I've ever had such a love/hate relationship with a book. The main character was exceptionally well drawn. She was so real that, now that I've finished the book, she occupies more of a people-I've-known place in my brain than a fictional-character spot. But the "plot", holy cow! It was like the author was trying to set new records for wandering self-indulgence. The entire story was sex-obsessed, and not in an interesting psychological way. It was more of a going on an on and on about sex because that will make this art, right? kind of way. The sex stuff was naive, inexpert, plain bad writing. I expect good things from this author in the future, but this was not it.½

I was excited to start this book after reading the description and other reviews. Unfortunately, though, the characters and the stories didn't grab me and I found it really hard to get into.

After reading the first few pages, I didn't think I would like this book. After reading a little more, I found it to be a well-written interesting story of a young woman, Elsie, telling her story of her inner needs in her thoughts and actions. The parts about her visits to Sri Lanka were vivid and fascinating and she takes us with her into the life of her friend, Suriya, and her family. I wish she had explained more definitively the aftermath of the man who forced himself on her. Did she run to the bus immediately and never see him again, as she should have done? I wasn't sure as one scene of her on her bed suddenly went to her riding on a bus and then calling her boyfriend. Over all, it was a well-told story and leaves us wondering if she finds the answers to her dreams.