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Bezig met laden... You Don't Have to Live Like This: A Novel (2015)door Benjamin Markovits
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 Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek.  KateVane | Jul 11, 2015 |  geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Prijzen
"A work of supreme control and complicated emotional subterfuge, YOU DON'T HAVE TO LIVE LIKE THIS is the breakout novel for one of Amerca's great young fiction writers. A book that uses the framework of our present reality to build it's own world, it blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction in the best way, and asks urgent, unforgettable questions about the future of our once great American cities, the state of American race relations, and the widening gap between rich and poor"-- Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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 Google Books — Bezig met laden...GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: (3.23)
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1
The premise is great. Greg Marnier (known to his friends as Marny) is an underachieving academic, who feels his life is going nowhere. His old college friend is a successful entrepreneur with political connections who is investing in the gentrification of Detroit. Marny, having nothing much else going on in his life, decides to move there and become a part of his vision.
I wanted to read this because I’d read a little about what was happening in Detroit and was interested in the issues it throws up. Marny is also a character of our time – highly educated but unable to convert that into secure and well paid employment.
However, this book didn’t work for me and it’s mostly down to the narration. ‘This and then this and then this’ may be authentic but it’s not necessarily interesting. Marny takes you stolidly through his life up until he decides to move, then we follow him in Detroit, where he apparently tells you about pretty much everyone he meets but you never really get to know any of them. Your perspective on the city’s landscape is the same. You’re seeing life from his point of view so you’re not getting much insight or overview.
There is a plot, which revolves around the conflict between the existing, mainly Black Detroit population and the mainly white, middle-class incomers. Marny finds himself caught in the middle, obviously belonging to the second group, but having relationships and sympathies with the first. You get some sense of the machinations of the political and business interests in the area but it’s hazy.
Overall, it didn’t grab me as a story and I feel I learnt as much about Detroit in 20 minutes online as I did from ploughing through this novel.
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I received an ARC from the publisher via Netgalley. (