Book Review: I'm Thinking of Ending Things

 

Book Review: I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid 

Goodreads Description: I’m thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It’s always there. Always.

Jake once said, “Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.”

And here’s what I’m thinking: I don’t want to be here.

In this smart and intense literary suspense novel, Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear, and the limitations of solitude. Tense, gripping, and atmospheric, I’m Thinking of Ending Things pulls you in from the very first page…and never lets you go.

My Review: After watching the movie adaptation, I scooped this book up immediately to see if there was more to the story. I was in a slump after watching too many boring, uninspired movies, so when I stumbled across this story, I was immediately drawn into its mysterious and introspective nature. While the book has a slightly different ending, for the most part, if you've seen the movie, there's not much more you're going to get out of the book. The book is quite clear about aspects that the movie keeps vague or layered in metaphor, but I personally preferred the movie's ambiguity over Reid's more direct approach. 

There's a lot of things to like about this book. It's a fascinating character study on the 'incels' of our society -- isolated men struggling with their mental health who direct the frustration for their situation onto women. These are the people who become mass shooters, who fall down radicalization rabbit holes, who kill themselves. Though we are introduced to and carried through the story by Jake's girlfriend, the entire book is eventually revealed to be a study on Jake. Even the parts that don't appear to be about him end up being about him. The book spends a lot of time philosophically musing on relationships and solitude-- both in dialogue and narration-- which is reflected in Jake's life-- a tangible example to contrast the theories proposed. 

Reid is excellent at building tension and suspense. The book sinks its hooks in you from the first page and never lets up. The slow build of mystery and threat made it hard to put the book down, but this tension felt too drawn out over the climax, as if Reid didn't know how to escalate it into a full conflict when the time came. At times, Reid strays into cheesy territory by using phrases that feel both clumsy and condescending. Lines like, "I'm so attracted to him," lacked any subtly, while the epilogue's meta direction that "You should read it. But maybe start at the end. Then circle back," felt like Reid was talking down to his readers, as if he didn't trust them to understand what he'd done without directing the audience to re-read the book with its twist ending in mind. It is good to keep in mind that this is Reid's debut into fiction (with an established non-fiction career preceding it), so it may be that Reid doesn't yet trust that his readers will pick up what he's laying down. Hopefully this is resolved in his later books. 

TL;DR: 3/5 stars. An interesting philosophical dissection of relationships and solitude with mediocre prose. 

Book Review: Brave New World

 

Book Review: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley 

Goodreads Description: Brave New World is a novel written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley and published in 1932. Set in London in the year AD 2540 (632 A.F.—"After Ford"—in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning that combine profoundly to change society.

My Review: Brave New World is a difficult classic to get invested in. Huxley had a point to make with this book, but he largely expresses that through worldbuilding rather than narrative. The dystopia he presents is indeed fascinating -- governments controlling people through pleasurable distractions rather than pain -- but it's coupled with next to no plot, unlikable characters, dry, colourless writing, and awkward pacing, which makes it a difficult swallow for modern readers. Brave New World is a quintessential dystopia through its soul crushing ending, but its lack of plot and character depth also robs that ending of some of its power. Instead of seeing how these characters struggled against the system and lost, we see them tour their world before ultimately submitting to it. I'm sure others feel differently, but I felt that many other classic dystopias do a better job at emotionally engaging the reader with the characters' struggle.

Now, the worldbuilding in this book is indeed fantastic. Huxley's ideas around governments conditioning behaviour and controlling people through pleasure was truly ahead of his time. It would be another 30 years before theorists like Michel Foucault began echoing these sentiments during their research on governmental and systematic power. Huxley's vision of this control is absolute, beginning with psychological and biological conditioning before birth, and continuing through pleasurable distractions like drugs (Soma) and sex (orgies). Huxley also questions the concept of civilized society, contrasting his "utopian" future against a racist caricature of Indigenous "tribal" life. Huxley posits that for all society's advancements, our moral regression has left us less civilized than the "savage" societies we purport to be superior to. While Huxley makes some interesting points about what is "savage" and "civilized," he singles out polyamorous sexual behaviour as the ultimate moral failing of modern society, which feels pretty dated. 

If you're just getting into classic dystopias, I don't recommend starting with Brave New World. It is worth the read, but more for the concepts it introduces rather than the story it's trying to tell. 

TL;DR: 3/5 stars. A fascinating world with a mediocre narrative.